Dan M. Brown

Dan Brown names an important and overlooked part of the design process so that we can rightly attend to it. The book discusses discovery activities, the discovery mindset, and a set artifacts aligned to a 4-quadrant model: Gather, Process, Explore, Analyze. Light stories serve as a bit of a backbone to describe traps, pitfalls, and tie activities together between phases.

The model itself is a 2x2, set against Framing Direction-setting (horizontal) and Converging Diverging (vertical). With show more descriptions of tools, activities, anecdotal examples and abstract samples, it lacks a strong point of view on how it all should fit together... while there's no ideal or standard project, it's nice to have a clear picture to serve as guiding light, until experience builds intuition and fluency.

In all, a smart collection of discovery technique that's worth a read or revisit before new projects. Dan Brown's experience shows in the breadth of topics covered. For deeper details on the execution of any specific area, you'll need to look further into one of the many cited references and resources. show less

I read this book mostly for the last section of the book on Design (truthfully, I skipped the first two sections). I was specifically interested in Site Maps and Wireframes. The info was light, and didn't talk as much about the process of creating the maps/wireframes as I would have liked, and when it did, I sorta disagreed with the approach.

I think the biggest disconnect for me was that the book felt like it was focused on being used in a waterfall-based environment, and I lean more towards show more agile perspectives. show less

If you need to present ideas on a web site to others, this is your book. Covers the processes of creating web-related documents in a comprehensive manner. It's focused on the documents, but also lets you know how to approach them, what to watch out for, how they work with each other, and how they fit into the processes of developing and designing a website. It covers each document in a similar way and from a layered approach, rather than a 'always do it this way' style. It's easy to read, show more but there's a lot of insightful information to go over, so it's not an 'overnight' book. show less

This is a practical book with a clear focus: creating design documentation. Brown covers ten design deliverables in detail, including sitemaps, flowcharts, wireframes, and screen designs. This is a very hands-on book that goes into great detail of creating design deliverables with many good examples. It’s highly recommended.