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Creating Passionate Users

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Saved by 169 people (48 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-03-02


Public Comment

on 2006-07-09 by muaddib

They're all passionate about the brain and metacognition, most especially--how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory. Oh yeah, and how to recognize when someone else (including one of us) is applying brain-based techniques t

on 2006-07-25 by billso

Kathy Sierra's blog, covers the development process for the "Head First" books, usability, mindmapping, and other topics.

on 2006-08-10 by forgetcolor

blog by the writers of the 'head-first' series -- design, usability, etc.

on 2006-10-03 by bconnelly

Good post in the vein of George Leonard's "Mastery"

on 2006-10-25 by vahidm

users and their demands and how to work with them

on 2006-10-25 by stumax

Brain-friendly business blogging

on 2006-12-24 by willrich

A successful learning blog is about helping the readers learn and grown and kick ass! Make that happen, and your stats will take care of themselves. In contrast, the best way to ensure a low readership is to assume that readers are into you. Offering user

on 2007-08-21 by markpea

Head First and Head Rush author

Public Sticky notes

There are so many opportunities--big and small, trivial and important--that we dismiss out of habit or fear or simply because we didn't slow down long enough to consider how it might feel if we said yes. At the end of my life, I'll have a lot of regrets, but taking the scenic route isn't one of them. But what about taking risks on a job, relationship, move, business, adventure? If I fail, will I regret trying? Or will I regret not trying?

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We can all take a lesson from filmmakers: endings matter. The way we end a conversation, blog post, user experience, presentation, tech support session, chapter, church service, song, whatever... is what they'll remember most. The end can matter more to users than everything we did before. And the feeling they leave with is the one they might have forever.

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"The secret is to be more provocative and interesting than anything else in their environment."

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We can moan all we want about how the responsible person should pay attention to what's important rather than what's compelling. But it's not about responsibility or maturity. It's not even about interest. It's about the brain.

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So this isn't about having to bribe people into paying attention by sexing things up with graphics, sound, or shock.

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Provocation is in the eye of the provoked, obviously, so there's no clear formula. But there's plenty we can try, depending on the circumstances, including:

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* Be Visual

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* Be Different--Break Patterns and Expectations

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As long as we're doing what everyone else is doing (or what we have always done), the brain can relax and think, "Nothing new here... whew... what a relief

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* Be Daring

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* Change Things Regularly
This is about continually breaking your own patterns.

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Inspire Curiosity
Humans often find puzzles and even questions irresistible.

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* Pose a Challenge

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* Be Controversial and Committed

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* Be Fun
Remember, brains love fun because fun=play, and play=practicing-to-survive.

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* Be Stimulating. Be Exciting. Be Seductive
Keep in mind that seduction does not have to mean sexual. A good storyteller can seduce me into sticking with the story

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* Help them have Hi-Res Experiences
This gets back to the notion of being-better-is-better. The more your users know and can do, the higher resolution experience they have.

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* I use only the smallest portion of Photoshop's capabilities
nothing exotic or difficult. Mostly I use the Layer Styles palette to make drop shadows, and then the freehand paintbrush to draw the annotation arrows. The most important part of the process is preparing the graphics for the web, and Photoshop makes this quite easy using the "Save for Web"' dialog box. You want the file sizes as small as possible--I try for under 10k, but some of my graphics may be as big as 20k if they're quite complicated with lots of different colors and subtle shading.

* Charts and Graphs
Most of my graphs come entirely from Photoshop, but for pie-charts or more precise bar charts I use a different app to create the chart, then copy or import it into Photoshop to add annotations or play with the colors, etc. Obviously Excel would work for this, but I use Apple's Keynote which has basic charting capability. Graphs and charts are the one area I really want to develop, and so I'm currently reading:

--Tufte's books including his latest, Beautiful Evidence

-- Steven Few's books (a little more accessible than Tufte) including Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

--I'm just starting to explore DeltaGraph software, so if you suddenly see over-the-top charts and graphs on the blog, you'll know that the novelty hasn't worn off.

* Stock photography
Stock photos used to be expensive, but thanks to web apps like iStockPhoto, you can get just about anything you can imagine for a couple dollars (if the photos are just for the web, you can get away with the lowest resolution/least expensive version of the photo).

People always ask about the 50's photos I use here and in the books--they're in a stock photography collection we own called Retro Americana from the Getty Images Photodisc collection. The Retro Americana collection is now "retired" (stock photo agencies often take collections out of circulation for a few years to prevent them from being overexposed), but it'll probably be available again in the future. Of course there are about a zillion other stock photo collections, not counting all the one-at-a-time pictures from places like iStockPhoto.

Another source we use (especially for the books) are Hemera's inexpensive PhotoObjects collections, which give you objects on a clear white background. (Like the, um, black lingerie I used in my "I'm not a woman blogger" post)

* Fonts
I use handwriting fonts for my hand-drawn annotations, and the best source for fonts is probably the inexplicably named fonts.com site.

* Find your own style!
Don't copy ours unless it feels like you. 50's people with cartoon thought bubbles, festive fonts, and hand-drawn annotations are what we do because it's what we like to do. (And, oh yes, because it's about the only thing we know how to do given our lack of design/art/illustration skills).

* More Resources
An earlier post of mine

RapidViz

Drawing on the right side of the brain

I'm sure many of you have other tips to add including other software apps, books, and ideas. My favorite tip is to go nowhere without a small notebook and something to draw with. When I have time to kill, I'm always sketching out ideas for graphics for the books or here on the blog. Have fun!

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Outinspire

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This blog has always been abo

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Head First Ad

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