I received a number of books for Christmas and I thought I would share a couple. I’m not one for book reviews but I’m sure some of the thoughts contained in these books will make it into later posts. I have hard time getting through my library of texts pertaining to Information Architecture, Experience Design, and the like. You have to be pretty dedicated to read from the beginning to end George Lakoff’s “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things” or even Sorting Things Out. These books just seem very dry. I have high hopes for Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability which at first glance looks well written with an easily digestible format similar to Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think”. Amazon describes the book better than I will as follows:

“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.”

The other book, Ricardo Semier’s “Maverick” might also prove to be a good read and it’s a topic I’m quite interested in – how to transform your workplace. Here’s a long passage from the end of the book:

“To survive in modern times, a company must have an organizational structure that accepts change as its basic premise, lets tribal customs thrive, and fosters a power that is derived from respect, not rules. In other words, the successful companies will be the ones that put quality of life first. Do this and the rest – quality of product, productivity of workers, profits for all – will follow. At Semco we did away with strictures that dictate the “hows” and created fertile soil for differences. We gave people an opportunity to test, question, and disagree. We let them determine their own futures. We let them come and go as they wanted, work at home if they wished, set their own salaries, choose their own bosses. We let them change their minds and ours, prove us wrong when we are wrong, make us humbler. Such a system relishes change, which is the only antidote to the corporate brainwashing that has consigned giant businesses with brilliant pasts to uncertain futures.”

Ambient Findability : What We Find Changes Who We Become and Maverick : The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace