Badass: Making Users Awesome 1st Edition

I felt both extremely happy, and very depressed, when I finished reading this book. Why these mixed feelings ?Happy, because it's easily one of the best books I have read. Kathy has some great information to share on "how to learn" - and her book is a great model of how to teach ! The content is excellent ; the message is sticky and memorable; and formatting is brilliant. There's lots of white space, which means the book is a quick read; and the images are memorable. I love the clever terms she has coined as well - these make her message very sticky. How can you not love an author who talks about the brain's spam filter; and the new user's fear of the "suck threshold".I just wish there was way of highlighting stuff in the kindle edition, so I could share this and bookmark it . For some reason, this has been disabled in this book.Kathy is a wise teacher and has distilled lots of counterintuitive intelligence in this book. Reading the book is like having a conversation with her. She anticipates your questions and doubts, and answers them - it's like she is reading your mind.So, if it's such an outstanding book, why am I depressed ?It's because I know I'll never be able to write such a great book ( though I wish I could !), It also breaks my heart that all the people I am recommending this book to ( for example, my daughters), may end up never reading it. What a tragedy this would be - this book is worth its weight in gold.After putting this book down, I remembered the story of the lady who asked Mark Twain to sign her copy of Tom Sawyer . After he had done so, she said - " Sir, I would give a thousand dollars not to have read Tom Sawyer...". Mark Twain was dismayed to hear this, until she completed her sentence by saying , " ...so I could have the pleasure of reading it again for the first time !"NB Even if you just learn about the power of the "power pose" in helping you do better, you will have more than justified the purchase of this book !

Full disclosure, Kathy wrote the foreword for my first business book, Think Like a Rock Star, and I consider her a friend. I also consider her a brilliant business mind and this book is exactly why. There are so many key lessons that Badass teaches us, but perhaps the greatest one is that sustainable success doesn't live in anything the company does, it lives in your users/customers. Companies are always looking for ways to create and cultivate positive Word of Mouth. But the WOM created by your Badass users is different because THEY are different. Users that are kicking ass with your product generate a sort of 'high resolution' WOM. What this means in business terms is that they can do a better job of selling your products to other customers! Instead of simply telling other customers that your product is 'cool', they can explain WHY it is cool. They can tell you the exact changes it created for them and how it improved their lives.And Kathy introduces a new type of WOM that Badass users can create: Word of Obvious. This is where users are so Badass that they don't even have to tell others about a product, their Badass work speaks for itself. "Did you see Jay's Flickr stream since he bought that new Canon camera? OMG his pictures look amazing, I have to ask him which model he got!"Creating Badass users creates Badass Word of Mouth. And Badass Word of Mouth drives Badass Sales :)I don't want to give away any more of the book since it is amazing. But one thing I did want to stress was the quality of the pages and presentation in this book. First, the pages are printed on very slick paper which is far superior to the newsprint style that most books use. Second, Badass has hundreds of graphs and visuals throughout, in the classic Kathy Sierra style. All of these visuals enhance the book and make it easier to grasp the key points that Kathy is trying to teach.Also, the book is organized so the reader knows exactly where they are in the journey. Kathy is constantly reminding us what we've learned so far, and what's coming next. She keeps the reader involved and moving forward. And she actually gets into the science of what motivates us to continue learning and to become Badass at something. From an author's perspective, I can see how the way Kathy structures the information is better to facilitate learning, and I've already made many notes and jotted ideas for changes I can make in the writing style for my next book.Just an amazing book, I really think 5-10 years from now we will be looking back at Badass as one of the seminal business books of this century. It will likely require multiple readings with your reward being a slightly deeper understanding each time of what it means to create Badass users and customers. Easily one of the best $20 investments you can make in your business.

Is not just a good book is the sum of many others and sierra gives you all the names and the way those other books are good books too.

This book truly gets me thinking in a different direction and I really like it. The author basically says that it's common for companies to design and sell their products as the center of the universe, when the center of the universe really is the user. The author teaches that products/services are tools that people need to reach a bigger goal, and there is more then one product/service that will help the user achieve this bigger goal.For example, let's say you want to become really good at photography. You buy a camera, a tripod, books on the subject, and Adobe Photoshop all in hopes of becoming bad-ass at photography. However, if any of those tools fail to help you achieve this bigger goal either the user will find a tool that does or just give up feeling the entire process has been made to hard and maybe even too expensive.The author goes on to outline how to help users achieve their goal through your product/service. Basically, she outlines a teach method that research has shown to work really well for people in general.This is one book that stays on my bookshelf, because I will read it again. As it has been a great asset in developing my overall skills in user experience design.