Rating: 
Summary: Good Technical Writing - Bad Examples
Review: Experience Design was exactly what its title says. The book is full of pictures that can be found on the Internet, talks about what the author believes is the right way and wrong way to do a web site and avoids using any graphical demonstration of techniques. The book is a novelette on design pictures. It is all reading and no walk-though examples. The print is small and hard to read because it is placed over busy backgrounds.While the color pages are beautiful, there is not CD provided for studying or trying out techniques. the $45.00 price tag is a bit steep. There are other books on the market that provide better help for a designer looking for how-tos and suggestion on what to use on the web sites they are creating.
Rating: 
Summary: Get This Breakthrough Book If You Are Into Design
Review: I bought this book and love it! This book reminds me alot of the work done by Buckminster Fuller, Paulo Soleri and other visionaries like George Lakoff ("Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things") Rosalind Picard ("Affective Computing") and all of the Edward Tufte's work. This guy is onto something big--a field that is new and getting bigger every day--experience design. Either you get it or you don't. If you are a geek looking for a book on how to handle digital artifacts that you can't feather in Photoshop 6.0 and want techo help, don't buy this book. Go to a hardware store. There are 10,000 titles out there that can help you. This book is unique--it's about experience design.... However, I think alot of nuts and bolts web designers and developers will benefit enormously from reading this book. When Marshall McCluhan wrote "Understanding Media" most people didn't get it and it seems that the same is true of some of the reviews on this site. By way of background, I am extremely biased and have been a Nathan fan as are a bunch of other people much more notable than me--major design gurus like Clement Mok, Richard Saul Wurman (who once described Nathan as a prodigy) and a host of others. Nathan's web work (as well as his other design work in other media) is legendary in the industry. Remember the cover of one of the early "Wired" magazine issues that spoke glowingly about the "Johnny Mneumonic" web hunt? Guess who invented that? Nathan. That is experience design. The Windows 95 Product Release site where you could download new product and was the heaviest hit site in history the day it went up? Nathan. That's experience design. The interactive "build your own bank" experience at Bank of America in 1995? That's experience design. Nathan. Point made. As I read it,this book is intended to get at the underlying design principles of an emerging field that Nathan and his colleagues call "experience design." It drives everything. This is an incredible book that lays out the foundation theory of interactive experience design and then provides the reader with an incredible assortment of experiences which are catalogued very systematically for the reader. You have to get off your butt and interact with them, not just read about them in the book--that's the point. For example, if you read "Experience Design" and go see "De La Guarda" -pages 292, you will discover that it is a theatical experience not a web site (as one reviewer claims)! And if you go to "De La Guarda," as I did on Nathan's recommendation, you will have your mind blown and learn new things about how information can be presented in 3 dimensional space with audience interaction. Take "Cirque du Soleil" on pages 128-129. The book lays out a new view of why this works. Try buying a chair... which is described on pp. 76-77. Read why the site works in the book, try the site and then you will know why so many B2C sites have hit the wall and failed but could be great like this one is. But you need to interact. Oh yeah, Nathan helped design the site. This book isn't theory, it is a catalog of interactive experiences with a set of design principles throughout that you can use. Buy this book and keep it near by at all times.
Rating:
Summary: experience isnt formulaic
Review: shedroff doesnt spell out formulas. he provides inspiration. in a world where there isn't a lot of fresh thinking going on (let's consider the referential work of insecure writers who "quotily" hang on the coat-tails of popular authors) shedroff is willing to say what he believes. he is ambitious and draws from a wide range of subjects, presenting a massive spread of ideas that demand his readers concentrate and consider. and as with any experience, the book isnt a separated set of logic, but a smear, which considers all things together, as one. its a generalized approach to thinking, not particulate. this means its about art, not logic. in the end, shedroff has written an excellent book that provides doors to new ideas. if you want to be told how to think and what to do, look elsewhere. if you want a book that gives you options, Experience Design does it.
Rating:
Summary: alternative thinking
Review: shedroff doesnt spell out formulas. he provides inspiration. in a world where there isn't a lot of fresh thinking going on (lets consider the referential work of insecure writers who "quotily" hang on the coat-tails of popular authors) shedroff is willing to say what he believes. he is ambitious and draws from a wide range of subjects, presenting a massive spread of ideas that demand his readers concentrate and consider. and as with any experience, the book isnt a separated set of logic, but a smear, which considers all things together, as one. its a generalized approach to design. its not particulate. its about the art, not the logic. in the end, shedroff has written an excellent book that provides doors to new ideas. if you want to be told how to think and what to do, look elsewhere. if you want a book that gives you options, Experience Design does it.
Rating:
Summary: experience isnt formulaic
Review: shedroff doesnt spell out formulas. he provides inspiration. in a world where there isn't a lot of fresh thinking going on (let's consider the referential work of insecure writers who "quotily" hang on the coat-tails of popular authors) shedroff is willing to say what he believes. he is ambitious and draws from a wide range of subjects, presenting a massive spread of ideas that demand his readers concentrate and consider. and as with any experience, the book isnt a separated set of logic, but a smear, which considers all things together, as one. its a generalized approach to thinking, not particulate. this means its about art, not logic. in the end, shedroff has written an excellent book that provides doors to new ideas. if you want to be told how to think and what to do, look elsewhere. if you want a book that gives you options, Experience Design does it.
Rating:
Summary: experience isnt formulaic
Review: shedroff doesnt spell out formulas. he provides inspiration. in a world where there isn't a lot of fresh thinking going on (let's consider the referential work of insecure writers who "quotily" hang on the coat-tails of popular authors) shedroff is willing to say what he believes. he is ambitious and draws from a wide range of subjects, presenting a massive spread of ideas that demand his readers concentrate and consider. and as with any experience, the book isnt a separated set of logic, but a smear, which considers all things together, as one. its a generalized approach to thinking, not particulate. this means its about art, not logic. in the end, shedroff has written an excellent book that provides doors to new ideas. if you want to be told how to think and what to do, look elsewhere. if you want a book that gives you options, Experience Design does it.
Rating:
Summary: alternative thinking
Review: shedroff doesnt spell out formulas. he provides inspiration. in a world where there isn't a lot of fresh thinking going on (lets consider the referential work of insecure writers who "quotily" hang on the coat-tails of popular authors) shedroff is willing to say what he believes. he is ambitious and draws from a wide range of subjects, presenting a massive spread of ideas that demand his readers concentrate and consider. and as with any experience, the book isnt a separated set of logic, but a smear, which considers all things together, as one. its a generalized approach to design. its not particulate. its about the art, not the logic. in the end, shedroff has written an excellent book that provides doors to new ideas. if you want to be told how to think and what to do, look elsewhere. if you want a book that gives you options, Experience Design does it.
Rating:
Summary: alternative thinking
Review: shedroff doesnt spell out formulas. he provides inspiration. in a world where there isn't a lot of fresh thinking going on (lets consider the referential work of insecure writers who "quotily" hang on the coat-tails of popular authors) shedroff is willing to say what he believes. he is ambitious and draws from a wide range of subjects, presenting a massive spread of ideas that demand his readers concentrate and consider. and as with any experience, the book isnt a separated set of logic, but a smear, which considers all things together, as one. its a generalized approach to design. its not particulate. its about the art, not the logic. in the end, shedroff has written an excellent book that provides doors to new ideas. if you want to be told how to think and what to do, look elsewhere. if you want a book that gives you options, Experience Design does it.
Rating: 
Summary: Experience something else
Review: The book was as confused as it was loaded with visual eye candy. The most pressing need for visual experience designers is knowing when to make information speak for itself and live on its own. It doesn't need to be fancy or dressed up like a overdone light show at a rock concert. Please, more substance.
Rating: 
Summary: good experience, bad design
Review: This book has wonderful tidbits of information scattered throughout. It definitely made it more enjoyable to read knowing that you do not have an idea of what the next experience is going to be. Every spread is a different taste, a different look and a different feel. The typography is also dispersed randomly throughout the spreads. This is where the book falls short. The content is well thought out whereas the actual design of the book was not. There is no reason for the type to be layed out as poorly as it is. No grid or methodology was established to help the book flow smoothly. Instead, the layout of this book causes a slightly difficult experience in a typograpghic sense. Some pages were skipped over due to illegibility. On a brighter note, the lower credits on the bottom of the pages gave a solid piece of reference which I used a lot. It kept me sitting by the computer during the whole read of this book. Overall, I would recommend this book to any designer or to anyone in any profession not even closely related to design for that matter. The content in this book helps people see the details in everything around us...Again, highly recommended and quick to cruise through with great URL's.
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