designing the digital experience

My book is now an Ebook!

by David Lee King on September 28, 2011

Designing the Digital ExperienceThe fine folks at Information Today/Plexus Publishing just emailed and told me … my book is now an ebook! Sweet!

So – my book, Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use EXPERIENCE DESIGN Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love, is now in ebook format at these fine publishers:

If you haven’t yet purchased it (or if you have the burning desire to have my book in ebook format and didn’t download a rogue copy), please go buy it!

And one more slightly vague, mysterious plug for my upcoming book – it’s in editing mode at the moment. I have some touch-up work to do on it before sending it back. There are a few more steps after that, too – publishing a book is definitely a multi-step process.

The new book (tentatively called Face2Face) focuses on the nuts and bolts of  using emerging web tools to connect with customers. There are tons of books on emerging web trends, but honestly not too many that include practical “how to” tips for actually using those tools to connect with customers, patrons … and people. So I thought I’d write about that.

Look for it next year!

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A Book Review of Designing the Digital Experience

by David Lee King on August 5, 2011

Designing the Digital ExperienceMy publisher just told me about a review of my book Designing the Digital Experience, and I thought I’d share it with you. The review was published in New Library World (Vol 111, No. 7/8, pg 359-360), and was written by Sarah McNicol.

She nailed it (and I’m not just saying that because it was a positive review). Here’s the start of the review:

“David Lee King is a librarian at the Topeka & Shawnee Country Public Library in Kansas, but he also writes an excellent blog (www.davidleeking.com) on emerging trends in library web sites and digital technology. In this book, he writes in the same accessible and interesting style, focusing on experience design and its role in building web sites. This is not a book about technical specifics, nor a step-to-step guide to building a web site, rather it is a book to make librarians and others, including web developers and marketing professionals, think more deeply about how they design an experience so web site users are “enchanted and captivated.”

Yes! I never intended to write a step-by-step guide to building an experience – how the heck do you do that, anyway? Building experiences, even digital ones, really depends on your individual setting – your staff, your stuff, and your community. My hope is that you read my book, and think. Think about how you can transform a simple website into an interactive experience – much like you already do in your physical buildings.

And … since I’m writing about the book … why not throw in a discount, too? If you buy the book from Information Today before September 5, use this promo code – ITISP. It will give you a discount. Otherwise, buy it from Amazon.

Thanks for reading! And … drumroll please … look for my second book sometime next year! I am a week or so away from sending it to the publisher to do the editing thing to it. Fingers crossed, and more info coming!

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Designing the Digital Experience Presentation

by David Lee King on January 7, 2010

Designing The Digital Experience

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On Tuesday, I gave a Designing the Digital Experience presentation at Nassau Library System in New York. It was a fun time – lots of good questions and discussion!

So … here are the slides from that talk. Enjoy!

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Writing an Experience Brief

by David Lee King on August 10, 2009

Designing the Digital Experience was reviewed!I just realized that I mentioned using an Experience Brief in my book and in some of my presentations, but haven’t explained much about actually writing one. Since it’s something I want to do for my library’s website, I decided to do some “how-to” research on writing experience briefs … here’s what I found.

First of all – what exactly is an Experience Brief? It’s related to the Creative Brief, from marketing land. A Creative Brief is used to succinctly describe all the stuff the creative group plans to do to promote a new product. An experience brief uses that same concept … but helps define the experiences a customer should experience while using your website.

An Experience Brief is summed up by 8sharp: “The Experience Brief goes beyond “look and feel” and asks, “What is the experience we want the user to have?”"

37signals’ ebook, Getting Real, gives another brief taste of what an Experience Brief is all about. “So what should you do in place of a spec? Go with a briefer alternative that moves you toward something real. Write a one page story about what the app needs to do. Use plain language and make it quick. If it takes more than a page to explain it, then it’s too complex. This process shouldn’t take more than one day.” They don’t really mention writing an experience brief … but writing a one page story about what the app/website needs to do IS a way to focus completely on the experience of the site/app.

MJ Braide goes a bit further in Get More From Brand Strategy Part Two: The Experience Brief. Here are some relevant quotes from the article:

  • “The Experience Brief is designed to help focus on the experiences that have the greatest impact on those that matter most to you. It begins with an inventory of the major interactions with whomever you consider to be your most important audiences.”
  • “For each of the most important groups, target experiences are defined that are closely linked to the brand promise. Important: this is about THEM not about YOU. It is the impressions, feelings and beliefs that you want to occur in THEIR minds, through what you do.”
  • “As with the Creative Brief, the Experience Brief is then used by every division and department of the organization to inform service standards, interaction protocols and whatever else the playbook demands, based on your strategy and the economics of your relationships.”

Finally, some words of advice from Advertising Age – What Are You Packing Into Your (Creative) Briefs?

  • Think simple. The more sophisticated the brief, the simpler it should be. The more glissandi and grace notes the piece has, the harder it is to play.
  • More spaces to fill present a greater opportunity for bad poetry. Avoid theoretical definitions; keep the language at the 8th-grade level.
  • It’s been suggested that you’ll know you’re onto something big when you can pitch the story in under 30 seconds. Can you deliver an elevator speech for your product? Are you writing it to be read?

Hope this helps! ANyone have anything to add? Do you know what goes into writing either an experience brief or a creative brief? Ever written one? Please share!

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Steps to Mapping a Customer’s Journey

by David Lee King on June 29, 2009

Designing the Digital ExperienceAwhile back, I sent Valeria Maltoni (who writes the cool Conversation Agent blog) a copy of my book – Designing the Digital Experience.

She’s been reading it, and blogged about it (very awesome – thanks, Valeria)! And in the process, she has some really good pointers about mapping the customer journey (which I wrote about in Chapter 11). She came up with some steps to mapping a customer’s journey:

  1. Connect the dots between internal preparedness and external needs – overcoming internal processes and barriers that block you from giving your customer a better “journey”
  2. Integrate what you say with what you do – “How are all of the messages you’re sending out in each medium integrating with the feedback you receive in that medium, for example? What are you learning and feeding back into the process?”
  3. Innovate at each touch point – “What process or tool have you not updated for a long time and needs revisiting, for example?”

… and each point discusses the “moment of truth” found in each of those steps.

Go read the whole post – good stuff there!

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Seen at the Richland County Public Library

by David Lee King on April 6, 2009

My book seen at Richland County Public libraryTyler, from the 344pounds.com blog, was kind enough to take this snapshot of Designing the Digital Experience sitting on the shelf at the Richland County Public Library and email it to me! Here’s what Tyler said about the book:

Hey David,

I bought your book off of Amazon yesterday, but also went down to the
Richland County Public library to check it out until it gets here.

Attached are the pics from that visit!

I found about you and your site a little while ago by searching for
something about designing a better blog for users (can’t remember exact term).  I started a personal blog, 344pounds.com, about 3 months ago — I
don’t have a huge technical background, but I’m learning as much as I can
so I can make sure my blog is “good” for my customers, aka readers.

While your book is *marketed* towards designers and business owners, I
think that anybody who has any type of website can benefit from the book,
even a small “not for profit” personal blog like mine.  I’ve already found
quite a few things from reading your book that I can apply to my blog.

Feel free to post this on your blog or testimonials page or whatnot — I’d
love to help sell the book, it’s great!

Tyler

Thanks Tyler for buying the book, taking the pics, and the kind words! You rock!

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My Book was Spotted in the Wild!

by David Lee King on March 27, 2009

I left it this wayMy book, Designing the Digital Experience, has been spotted in the wild! Or more appropriately, I spotted it at the Barnes and Noble in Topeka, KS.

Which got me to thinking … if you ever happen to see my book in your local bookstore, please take a pic and send it to me (or send me the flickr link), and I’ll post it here – that might be fun (or it could be really embarrassing, if you can’t find the book anywhere … :-)

And for some related book-ish news: I’ll be at Computers in Libraries next week. CIL always puts on a great conference – lots of new emerging trends and practical, “use it tomorrow” tips, all focused on libraries and info professionals. If you are one of those, you should try to get to this conference!

I’ll be speaking a time or two as well – on Tuesday, I’m talking about designing digital experiences, and on Monday night I’ll be doing a book signing at the InfoToday booth.

Make sure to stop by and say hi!

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Designing the Digital Experience: Table of Contents

by David Lee King on December 11, 2008

I completely forgot – I was planning to share the Table of Contents of my book, Designing the Digital Experience, with y’all! So here it is…

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Two Great Book Reviews of Designing the Digital Experience

by David Lee King on December 11, 2008

Designing the Digital Experience was reviewed!Book News and The Tech Static recently mentioned my book, Designing the Digital Experience – cool! Book News said the book is “for web developers who are looking to enhance the customer’s experience with ordering and browsing online, stressing the fact that Internet consumers are looking for a pleasant and positive shopping environment as well as bargains.”

And The Tech Static wrote a great review. They said the book “is an entertaining introduction to web design, usability, and Web 2.0 for the beginner, as well as a stimulus for those with previous experience.”

Go read both – then buy lots of the books… they make great stocking stuffers :-)

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Excerpt of Chapter 5 up at Webjunction

by David Lee King on November 16, 2008

my book arrivedWebJunction recently excerpted chapter 5 of my new book in this article: Designing the Digital Experience: What is Community?

Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt:

Chapter 5 – What Is Community Focus?

What exactly is community focus, and how does it facilitate experiences in the digital space? To answer these questions, let’s consider what community focus means in the context of physical spaces, such as in a town hall meeting. In such meetings, people are focusing on one another: listening, sharing opinions, and discussing community needs. This type of interaction allows community members to voice opinions and concerns, providing a voice for the community. In this context, we can say community focus is an emphasis on participants’ ideas, concerns, and interactions.

The town hall meeting is just one example; people obviously hold many different types of meetings, from religious gatherings to departmental business meetings to family reunions. We tend to think meetings are important. Why is that? Because we find conversation important, and meeting together facilitates conversation.

Conversation inherently facilitates something else, too. It allows us to interact with members of our community with whom we wouldn’t normally interact or even know. This type of interaction allows us to feel as if we are participating in the “grand scheme of things.” The challenge, then, is to usher community into our digital space.

…

Go read the rest of the excerpt (or buy the book :-) ).

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