Kathy Sierra

I'll read anything Kathy Sierra writes. I actually ordered this book when I was out of town, having it delivered to a hotel because I was looking forward to it that much. What I got was a book that inspired me to think differently about how I plan features, UX, and everything else for users.

What stuck with me the most was the concept of putting users into different "buckets" of ability on your product -- beginners, intermediate and advanced. If you aren't moving users up in their abilities on multiple features at once, then people will leave your product. Thinking about things in this perspective was incredibly helpful for me.… (meer)

I really enjoyed “Baddass: Making Users Awesome.” Kathy Sierra here has brought together best practices from a range of disciplines, design, expertise development, word of mouth marketing, human motivation, pedagogy, etc., and created a grand synthesis that shows how to create the kind of “badass” users that make your product shine. Instead of gimmicky approaches based on extrinsic motivations like gamification and viral social media content, Kathy focuses on making the user successful at the larger context, what the user really wants to achieve with your product. I've seen bits and pieces of this before, but never before brought together, along with original ideas, in one place in such a framework. The book is visually attractive and a compelling, engaging read. I feel smarter after reading this and look forward to applying these techniques in my next project. Highly recommended.… (meer)