Rating: 
Summary: Superficial babble
Review: Not worth the paper it is printed on. A superficial treatment of analysis, design and implementation of web sites. After reading 73 pages of content-free material I finally gave up trying to find anything amid the fluff and chucked this one in the trash.
Rating: 
Summary: If you have limited budget, skip it.
Review: Ok, tons of books on user experience, UI desing, IA, etc....
So if you have limited budget, then I suggest trying out some
other books. It has some interesting and useful stuff.
Book is tries to be "theoretical", but it doesn't quite work.
Rating: 
Summary: A clear and concise map of the user experience world
Review: Subtitled 'User-Centred Design for the Web', this new book is designed to give the big picture, addressing ideas rather than techniques. At less than 200 pages and with many graphics, it's a book you can read in an afternoon, but at the same time it manages to cover a remarkable number of ideas. The most powerful idea in the book is the Garrett's 'elements' referred to in the title, which he defines as five planes or layers of experience - surface, skeleton, structure, scope and strategy. Garrett explains clearly and elegantly how user needs, content requirements, navigation design, visual design and other components fit into this 5-plane scheme. I can see Garrett's graphics become standard tools for UX professionals needing to explain to clients what they do, why it's important, and how it fits in with what others do. This is a good book to put into the hands of senior and middle managers who know little about Web development, and specialists in other disciplines - such as graphic designers - who need an appreciation of how all the elements from different professionals slot together.
Rating:
Summary: An Introduction to User Interface Design
Review: The book is an introduction text to the field of user interface design. What I found useful in the book is thinking about the user interface as a number of layers and this reminds me of the layer approach used when explaining communication technologies. I've been using a simpler 3 layer model to communicate what is a user interface to non-professionals and that works. However, even knowing that a user interface contains several layers does not help you build a user interface. From my experience, building user interfaces requires synthesis. This is where I found this book lacking, it tells you about the required parts but unfortunately doesn't really help tell you how to put them together. Using a cooking analogy, you have the ingredients for the meal but you are missing the quantities and cooking times. Therefore this book is great to understand what a user interface but it is of limited help to build a user interface.
Rating:
Summary: A User Experience Designer's Delight
Review: There is a fundamental question that must be asked about Jesse James Garrett's book: why did he need to write it? Mr. Garrett's well known "User Experience" stacking diagram is already a very clear rendition of the complicated process of designing for a web user's experience, so why did he have to write a book to explain it? The answer is that vast numbers of people who should know about these processes don't. While JJG's stacking diagram may be familiar to Information Architects and other user experience designers, it is virtually unknown to the other 95% of the organization that is responsible for selling, marketing, building, and/or maintaining web sites. True to his words, Jesse James Garrett delivers a book that neither explains how to do anything, nor provides answers to technology questions about web sites. In fewer than 200 pages, Mr. Garrett does provide a whirlwind survey of the intricacies of interactive design for the web. Mr. Garrett begins by promising that the book will take only a few hours to read, and he's pretty close to the mark. As I would have expected, the book's design helps keep his promise. The pages are well laid out with plenty of whitespace and supporting diagrams nicely illustrating his points; his language is clear, concise and direct; his presentation not only supports (and is guided by) the stacking diagram, each point logically follows from the last. Within a few pages, it is very clear that Mr. Garrett did not write the book for practitioners already familiar with his three dimensional diagram. He is focused instead on those people who are not in the daily struggle of designing appropriate experiences for web site visitors. But that doesn't mean the book can't be used by well-heeled user experience designers. Practitioners will find the book an invaluable aid in their on-going evangelical efforts within their own organizations, or as part of their consultancies, as they explain the processes, methods and vocabulary of user experience design to those unfamiliar with this emerging discipline. For those individuals, the book provides a clear and straightforward introduction to the very complicated and intertwined issues of designing engaging experiences for the web, whether they are "content" or "application" driven. I, for one, will be recommending Mr. Garrett's book as a "must read" for everyone in my company.
Rating:
Summary: A User Experience Designer's Delight
Review: There is a fundamental question that must be asked about Jesse James Garrett's book: why did he need to write it? Mr. Garrett's well known "User Experience" stacking diagram is already a very clear rendition of the complicated process of designing for a web user's experience, so why did he have to write a book to explain it? The answer is that vast numbers of people who should know about these processes don't. While JJG's stacking diagram may be familiar to Information Architects and other user experience designers, it is virtually unknown to the other 95% of the organization that is responsible for selling, marketing, building, and/or maintaining web sites. True to his words, Jesse James Garrett delivers a book that neither explains how to do anything, nor provides answers to technology questions about web sites. In fewer than 200 pages, Mr. Garrett does provide a whirlwind survey of the intricacies of interactive design for the web. Mr. Garrett begins by promising that the book will take only a few hours to read, and he's pretty close to the mark. As I would have expected, the book's design helps keep his promise. The pages are well laid out with plenty of whitespace and supporting diagrams nicely illustrating his points; his language is clear, concise and direct; his presentation not only supports (and is guided by) the stacking diagram, each point logically follows from the last. Within a few pages, it is very clear that Mr. Garrett did not write the book for practitioners already familiar with his three dimensional diagram. He is focused instead on those people who are not in the daily struggle of designing appropriate experiences for web site visitors. But that doesn't mean the book can't be used by well-heeled user experience designers. Practitioners will find the book an invaluable aid in their on-going evangelical efforts within their own organizations, or as part of their consultancies, as they explain the processes, methods and vocabulary of user experience design to those unfamiliar with this emerging discipline. For those individuals, the book provides a clear and straightforward introduction to the very complicated and intertwined issues of designing engaging experiences for the web, whether they are "content" or "application" driven. I, for one, will be recommending Mr. Garrett's book as a "must read" for everyone in my company.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for someone who knows nothing of User Experience Design
Review: There was not much in this book that I didn't glean from Jesse's one page PDF back in 2000. If you're a professional designer that is curious about this book, just check out the PDF. It's free, quick, and concise. On the other hand, if you're someone that is new to UE, or maybe a designer struggling to get some core concepts across to a clueless team, client, or boss, then this book might nail what you're looking for. It's well-written, physically small, and not intimidating at all. Jesse said it best in the intro: "This is not a book of answers. Instead, this book is about asking the right questions... This book will tell you what you need to know before you go read those other books." This book provides no insight into techniques or methodologies for user experience design. It only brings to light that those techniques and methodologies exist. Summary: Jesse, you wrote a good book. I just didn't pull much else from it past your excellent, excellent PDF a few years ago. Cheers.
Rating:
Summary: Good for someone who knows nothing of User Experience Design
Review: There was not much in this book that I didn't glean from Jesse's one page PDF back in 2000. If you're a professional designer that is curious about this book, just check out the PDF. It's free, quick, and concise. On the other hand, if you're someone that is new to UE, or maybe a designer struggling to get some core concepts across to a clueless team, client, or boss, then this book might nail what you're looking for. It's well-written, physically small, and not intimidating at all. Jesse said it best in the intro: "This is not a book of answers. Instead, this book is about asking the right questions... This book will tell you what you need to know before you go read those other books." This book provides no insight into techniques or methodologies for user experience design. It only brings to light that those techniques and methodologies exist. Summary: Jesse, you wrote a good book. I just didn't pull much else from it past your excellent, excellent PDF a few years ago. Cheers.
Rating:
Summary: A must have for Web development professionals
Review: This book is a step-by-step guide on how to plan and create a Web site from strategy, to scope, to architecture, to wireframes, to visual design. It is the most straightforward book on what steps need to be taken during the requirements and design stages (and who needs to do them) to ensure that the site meets business objectives and user needs. Garrett hits it right on the nose in this book when he says, "Creating the user experience is really little more than a very large collection of very small problems to be solved." By showing the steps in detail, and how they work together, Garrett shows how easy it is to address these small problems while keeping the bigger picture in mind. This book is truly a standard-setting piece of work that only takes a day to read and will change the way you think about Web development.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Resource
Review: This book is relevant to the designer/ developer and producer of many types of websites: educational, corporate and even ones of a more experimental nature.
After having read Alan Cooper, Louis Rosenfeld and Steve Krug I wasn't sure I'd learn anything new about information design/ architecture from this book. I was wrong. It's clear that Garrett knows his subject inside out but just as important is the way that the book is structured. It's a pleasure to read.
Another thing I appreciated was that his voice didn't get in the way of the information presented. Highly recommended.
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