Hacker News Reader

Comment by justjimmy | Hacker News Reader

I have a few questions:

1. Did you have to 'kick back' any money? To those that you interviewed, or companies where you used their screenshots in your examples/critiques? Did you reach out to them and notifying them that they/their company will be in your book for profit?

2. From the sample chapter, you talk a lot about principles and critiques of interface design but are there any area in the book where there are data or user ability studies to explain it further (ie: why they work)? Or is most of it based on experience?

3. Any plans for a sample page on the case study? I think that's where the most value is - the full process of where you take us through your thoughts and reasoning on designing a product.

View on HN

1. No, I didn't. Everyone was very gracious and there was never an expectation for money. For some people like patio11 and Jason Fried my book sales would not represent a meaningful amount of money. It's better to not even bring it up. Many of the people I interviewed have become friends and I try to help them in any way possible.

For companies I didn't contact them in most cases. The few I did talk to were thrilled their designs were being used as an example in a book.

2. This book is light on data and studies. That's a short coming. These are all techniques that I know work well, but I don't always have a study to back it up.

3. I'm not sure what you mean about a sample page for the case study. To better market it? That case study has a lot of great content and I'll be working with the company further to write a lot more articles and tutorials around what we all learned in that process.

Thanks for the answers. Copyright use of images, especially screenshots, had always been a confusion point for me.

For the case study, basically I'd like to know what it entails before purchasing. All the other content speak of principles and guidelines but I find it more interesting to read about an actual case study, the thoughts and reasoning behind the decisions made. (I can't find what the case study was about too - just that it's a time tracking service. Is it Harvest? Basecamp?)

You said you'll be working with the company further, I look forward to that one!

The company is called Tsheets (http://tsheets.com). Lots of great stuff coming from them in the next 6 months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com