Book Description

Wireframes, interactive prototypes, and UX specifications are among the fundamental deliverables of every UX project. They are also the most labor and time intensive to produce due to constant changes in business requirements. Given these circumstances, Axure is quickly taking over as the preferred tool for prototyping. However, prototyping in Axure is strikingly different from the conventional method of producing static wireframes and to rapidly develop interactive prototypes in Axure, you’ll need to have a good understanding of the tool and its features.

Whether you are an individual practitioner or a member of a UX team, a consultant, or an employee, this book will teach you how to use Axure, one of the leading UX tools. You will learn to use Axure for producing top-quality deliverables and tackling the demands of rapid iterative UX projects of any complexity and size, and for any platform and device.

Axure RP 6 Prototyping Essentials takes a very pragmatic approach to showing you how to use Axure and produce impressive deliverables while saving labor and time. You may not be in a position to change how projects are scheduled, budgeted, and managed, but you can be more creative and productive by mastering one of the leading UX tools in the market.

After an initial introduction to Axure’s user interface, terminology, and features, this book walks you through a medium-size UX project: a digital library that sells books, newspapers, and movies. Although some aspects of the prototyping process are simplified for the sake of clarity and efficiency, the demo project is an opportunity to discuss in context and in sequence topics Download Now »

Book Description

Physics for Flash Games, Animation, and Simulations teaches ActionScript programmers how to incorporate real physics into their Flash animations, games, user interfaces, and simulations.

• Introduces Flash physics in an accurate, but approachable way, covering what is required to produce physically realistic simulations (as opposed to animations that look roughly right)
• Packed full of practical examples of how physics can be applied to your own games and applications
• Addresses the diverse needs of game developers, animators, artists, and e-learning developers

The book assumes a basic knowledge of ActionScript and Flash. However, no previous knowledge of physics is required—only some very basic math skills. The authors present everything from basic principles to advanced concepts, so you’ll be able to follow the logic and easily adapt the principles to your own applications. The book builds on your physics knowledge, enabling you to create not only visual effects, but also more complex models and simulations.

What you’ll learn

• Basic math and physics you’ll need to incorporate realism into your games, animations and simulations
• How to incorporate a wide range of forces, including environmental forces such as gravity and friction, and forces due to fluids, such as drag and upthrust
• How to build a number of realistic simulations, like submarines and flight simulators Download Now »

Book Description

Pro Web Project Management is a collection of hard-won lessons the authors have learned managing modern web projects with small and medium budgets in a consulting environment. This isn’t a book about project management theory. Pro Web Project Management tells how to create real deliverables, get answers from indecisive clients, manage wayward programmers, and use checklists to wow clients. This book is made up of real examples, real lessons, real documents, and real tips woven together into a step-by-step walkthrough of a project’s life cycle.

Pro Web Project Management is written for both the full-time project manager and the aspiring project manager who might have a role that blends client support, web development, and project management. The project budget sweet spot for this book is $50,000 to $500,000. If you manage a project in this space, reading this book will make you a better project manager.

• Learn how to manage a modern web project with a budget of $50,000 to $500,000
• Get actionable tips on dealing with real project management challenges
• Learn the simple, defined process—refined over the years—to take simple and complex projects from proposal to successful launch

What you’ll learn

• How to run an effective meeting
• How to write scopes of work that lead to successful projects Download Now »

Book Description

Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you’ll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles.

We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You’ll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily “cocktail party,” version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works–and what doesn’t–you’ll find out how to:

• Make quality everyone’s business, not just the testers.
• Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement.
• Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement.
• Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus.

Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you’ll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles.

About the Author
Henrik Kniberg is a coach and consultant at Crisp. Henrik’s background is a mix of development and management, and his passion is applying Lean and Agile principles to help debug, optimize, and refactor companies. Henrik is the author of Scrum and XP from the Trenches and Kanban & Scrum, making the most of both and a popular keynote speaker at conferences worldwide. Henrik lives in Stockholm with his wife and four kids Download Now »

Book Description

Learn to build and deliver SharePoint BI applications

Written by a team of leading SharePoint and Business Intelligence (BI) experts, this unique book-and-DVD package shows you how to successfully build and deliver BI applications using SharePoint 2010. Assuming no previous SharePoint experience, the authors deliver a clear explanation of what SharePoint will do for your BI and information management capabilities.

Each lesson in the book is reinforced with a helpful tutorial on the DVD and cover topics such as interactive reporting with Excel, document sharing for collaborative reporting, and controlling data sources. As you learn best practices for configuring and securing SharePoint 2010 BI applications and planning and implementing your SharePoint BI project plan, you’ll be well on your way to gaining a solid foundation of understanding and working with SharePoint 2010 and BI.

• Provides an invaluable training book-and-DVD package that takes you through building and delivering BI applications using SharePoint 2010
• Features an accompanying video tutorial for each lesson covered in the book, along with a “Try It” section at the end of each lesson
• Covers interactive reporting with excel
• Covers Power Pivot advanced analytics
• Details report and document sharing for collaborative reportingShows how to use SharePoint lists and libraries for data sources repositories in your BI projects Download Now »

Book Description

Arduino Projects to Save the World shows that it takes little more than a few tools, a few wires and sensors, an Arduino board, and a bit of gumption to build devices that lower energy bills, help you grow our own food, monitor pollution in the air and in the ground, even warn you about earth tremors.

Arduino Projects to Save the World introduces the types of sensors needed to collect environmental data—from temperature sensors to motion sensors. You’ll see projects that deal with energy sources—from building your own power strip to running your Arduino board on solar panels so you can actually proceed to build systems that help, for example, to lower your energy bills. Once you have some data, it’s time to put it to good use by publishing it online as you collect it; this book shows you how.

The core of this book deals with the Arduino projects themselves:

• Account for heat loss using a heat loss temperature sensor array that sends probes into every corner of your house for maximum measurement.
• Monitor local seismic activity with your own seismic monitor.
• Keep your Arduino devices alive in the field with a solar powered device that uses a smart, power-saving design.
• Monitor your data and devices with a wireless radio device; place your sensors where you like without worrying about wires.
• Keep an eye on your power consumption with a sophisticated power monitor Download Now »