Originally gathered together for my students, this booklet was intended to help them differentiate between the different kinds of diagrams I was teaching and to help them understand when you might use each kind.

This mini guide is intended to be an overview of the landscape. It is not exhaustive but does go into detail about different kinds of maps, models and diagrams, what they would be used for and for most of them I include step by step instructions for how to work through making one. The mini guide also contains multiple examples of each kind of diagram from my own consulting professional practice.

By making these diagrams we can determine what is in or out, what elements or actors we need to pay attention to and we can start to see relationships between the concepts of a topic or system.

The later models show how you might visualize the taxonomy in a system and how to map user and system tasks, and experience journeys. The radial time and task diagrams and service blueprints explore what people actually need to do at different stages in a lifecycle.

Other diagrams include sitemaps, timelines, schedules, data (information) models and other kinds of information that when presented visually can become more clear and help you have tactical discussions with development and content teams.

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A mini visual design guide about color and its use for user experience designers. There are a lot of resources on the internet about color but to get the whole picture you have to find a lot of URLs, wade through examples from print sources to find digital examples of color in action and hunt around for useful tools to help you determine color palettes, accessibility issues and tools for specifying colors for CSS.

This guide covers some early color wheel history, color theory and gives a bunch of examples of color in action across mobile and content sites and applications. There are more resources provided to dig in deeper.

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Ever wonder why the space between lines of type is called leading? Or why Egyptian Slab Serifs have that name? This booklet covers a brief history of type design and printing through the different eras and the categories that we now use to classify typefaces. The booklet covers the parts of a typeface, the basics for specification both traditionally and in CSS and offers best practices for designing with type across textual content for reading accessibility and interface design. Filled with examples, this mini guide will help both new and seasoned user experience designers better understand the legacy of traditional type design and how to get started mastering type in their own work.

$5.95 pdf
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