Cover of Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become

Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become

How do you find your way in an age of information overload? How can you filter streams of complex information to pull out only what you want? Why does it matter how information is structured when Google seems to magically bring up the right answer to your questions? What does it mean to be "findable" in this day and age? This eye-opening new book examines the convergence of information and connectivity. Written by Peter Morville, author of the groundbreaking Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the book defines our current age as a state of unlimited findability. In other words, anyone can find anything at any time. Complete navigability.

Morville discusses the Internet, GIS, and other network technologies that are coming together to make unlimited findability possible. He explores how the melding of these innovations impacts society, since Web access is now a standard requirement for successful people and businesses. But before he does that, Morville looks back at the history of wayfinding and human evolution, suggesting that our fear of being lost has driven us to create maps, charts, and now, the mobile Internet.

Read more

The book's central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are all critical components of this new world order. Hand in hand with that is the contention that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices, and Internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future. Morville's book is highlighted with full color illustrations and rich examples that bring his prose to life.

Ambient Findabilitydoesn't preach or pretend to know all the answers. Instead, it presents research, stories, and examples in support of its novel ideas. Are we truly at a critical point in our evolution where the quality of our digital networks will dictate how we behave as a species? Is findability indeed the primary key to a successful global marketplace in the 21st century and beyond. Peter Morville takes you on a thought-provoking tour of these memes and more — ideas that will not only fascinate but will stir your creativity in practical ways that you can apply to your work immediately.

Subject
sciencebusinessself-help
Themes
technologyworkbooks about booksartmedia
Setting
workplacecollege
Audience
adult
Length
medium · 208 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web Shares ux, design, information architecture
  2. Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design Shares ux, design, nonfiction
  3. Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning Shares ux, design, nonfiction
  4. The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web Shares ux, design, nonfiction

“People who read Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices
  2. Designing Social Interfaces
  3. Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
  4. Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior

“If you want more of the same (science about technology), start with these.”

  1. Design for Hackers
  2. Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites
  3. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You
  4. On Web Typography

“If it was the ux that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody
  2. A Practical Guide to Information Architecture
  3. Information Anxiety 2
  4. The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Mobile Usability
  2. The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places
  3. Software Architecture in Practice
  4. Tap, Click, Read: Growing Readers in a World of Screens