Designing for User Engagement on the Web: 10 Basic Principles

by Cheryl Geisler (Editor)

Overview

Designing for User Engagement on the Web: 10 Basic Principles is concerned with making user experience engaging. The cascade of social web applications we are now familiar with — blogs, consumer reviews, wikis, and social networking — are all engaging experiences. But engagement is an increasingly common goal in business and productivity environments as well. This book provides a foundation for all those seeking to design engaging user experiences rich in communication and interaction.

Combining a handbook on basic principles with case studies, it provides readers with a rich understanding of engagement: extending a welcome, setting the context, making a connection, sharing control, supporting interaction, creating a sense of place, and planning to continue the engagement. Based on research funded by the Society for Technical Communication, the case studies illustrate how designers build community in order to support education, connect kids to community resources, introduce users to other cultures, foster collaboration, encourage activism, and much more.

Whatever your motive, if you aim to create engaging user experiences, you will want to explore Designing for User Engagement on the Web.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415823470
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/09/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Cheryl Geisler is Professor of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University where she is the inaugural Dean of the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology.

Table of Contents

The Principles
Principle 1: Design for Diverse Users

Principle 2: Design for Usability

Principle 3: Test the Backbone

Principle 4: Extend a Welcome

Principle 5: Set the Context

Principle 6: Make a Connection

Principle 7: Share Control

Principle 8: Support Interactions among Users

Principle 9: Create a Sense of Place

Principle 10: Plan to Continue the Engagement

The Case Studies

Case Study 1: Information Gallery for Young People

Case Study 2: Wikis for Collaboration

Case Study 3: Cultural Websites

Case Study 4: Usability in Distance Education

Case Study 5: An Interactive Image

Appendices

Appendix 1: Heuristic Evaluation

Appendix 2: Comparative User Testing

Appendix 3: Formal Testing

Editorial Reviews

Designing for User Engagement on the Web has arrived at a pivotal moment in the field of communication design and technical communication in particular, when the proliferation and popularization of user-generated content threatens to marginalize the role of the professional designer/writer. The authors convincingly argue and effectively demonstrate that this professional obsolescence is far from inevitable. The book envisions new roles for writers/designers that build on traditional strengths in user and task analysis, design, and usability testing, but that must now adapt to the uncertainty of tasks, users, contexts, and motivations that attends massively-collaborative user input. The ten principles outlined suggest how we build on our strengths, both analytically and formatively, by accommodating user engagement. Instead of framing the work of writers and designers in a traditional way, as packagers of usable content, the authors use their principles to recast that work as the facilitation of usable content. The principles are sensible, well argued, and compellingly grounded in projects whose usefulness will be immediately apparent. This book will be essential reading for programs that train writers and designers with relevance in the 21st century.

— Jason Swarts, North Carolina State University

From the Publisher