Suggested Reading List

This list is arranged to follow the organization of the chapters, starting with psychology and researching , then going on to hit the topics of designing, writing, producing, branding, usability, deployment, and art.

The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
This book is the standard for understanding how people work with technologies on a psychological level. It provides concrete insights into how we can take advantage of the social-psychological interaction between callers and computers.

Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine by Donald A. Norman (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994)
In addition to Norman's other great work, this book helps the reader understand how to think about taking a human-centered view of not just how to make better designs, but also how to think about determining which tasks are best to automate.

Film Directing Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen by Steven D. Katz (Studio City, CA: Wiese Productions, 1990)
The relevant ideas contained in this book are the similarities between film and speech-recognition systems. Read this book with a view to understanding the semi-linear nature of these two experiences, the method of visualizing the story (storyboarding as an analog to vision clips), and the structure of the production schedule.

The Synonym Finder by J. I. Rodale (New York City: Warner Books, 1986)
Designers for speech systems are surrounded by words and often find that it's hard to uncover just the right word to express an idea (perhaps to soften or strengthen it), or to find a different word to use in a particular context to avoid repetition. This text provides an easy and fast way to locate those words.

A New Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century by Scott Bedbury and Stephen Fenichell (New York City: Viking Penguin, 2002)
Read this book to gain understanding into how particular companies build brands well, and to learn about the role that brands play in the larger corporate environment.

Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen (San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1994)
Nielsen sets the standard for understanding the details of conducting usability tests in this easy-to-read, comprehensive work.

Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering by Henry Petroski (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
This book takes an interesting approach on gaining insight into designs by analyzing historical design failures. As with usability testing and deploying a system, the postmortem analysis of failures gives insight into how we can establish better design processes.

Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics by Herschel B. Chipp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)
Chipp's book is the standard for understanding how people think and talk about art in a modern context. While not accessible to all, use this book to gain understanding into the basic theories of modern art so that you can examine, chronologically, the radical movements in the art world and then apply the same underlying concepts to producing new interface designs.