Recommendations based on "Designing with the Mind in Mind"

Explaining Creativity is an accessible introduction to the latest scientific research on creativity. The book summarizes and integrates a broad range of research in psychology and related scientific fields. In the last 50 years, psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have devoted increased attention to creativity; we now know more about creativity than at any point in history. Explaining Creativity examines research on thinking processes, personality, culture, mental health, groupwork, technology, self-beliefs, and more. It also reviews creativity across fields such as the arts, science, theater, music, and writing.This new edition maintains the broad and practical, yet still detailed approach of the previous editions, but it features updated coverage on the full landscape of creative cognition, creative practice, and social and cultural contexts for creativity. With three new chapters on Creativity and Technology, Creativity and Wellbeing, and Creativity and Self, this third edition provides a comprehensive understanding of creativity for anyone interested in the topic.

In It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of the trailblazing software company Basecamp, reveal a bold, iconoclastic strategy for creating the ideal company culture, directly attacking the chaos, anxiety and stress that hamper billions of workers every day.Enduring long hours, carrying excessive workloads and functioning with a lack of sleep have become badges of honour for modern professionals. But these realities should be marks of stupidity, the authors argue. The answer to better productivity isn't more hours – it's less waste and fewer things that induce distraction and persistent stress. It's time to stop celebrating 'crazy' and start celebrating 'calm'.

Google’s Executive Productivity Advisor offers insights on how to make the “new way of work” work for you, providing actionable steps to optimize your productivity, accomplish more, prevent burnout, and cultivate a harmonious work-life balance. Every day, tens of thousands of Google employees, from executives to interns, rely on Laura Mae Martin’s tips and best practices for how to make the most of their time. Now, with Uptime, Laura brings her unique approach to productivity and well-being to anyone who wants to be more effective and experience “calm accomplishment,” whether at work, at school, or in their own personal lives. Laura began her Google career in sales but quickly carved out a niche for herself as a productivity expert. For more than a decade, she’s been coaching Google executives and employees on how to achieve a state of “productivity Zen”—a holistic approach to conquering everything from the avalanche of emails in their inboxes to becoming the master of their own calendars and running excellent meetings. Her strategies have been widely adopted by many, including entry-level employees looking to amplify their individual impact, middle managers, and top executives working across global teams. As many of us have moved to a hybrid environment blending work and home, managing our time efficiently and remaining productive is more important than ever. In Uptime, Laura shows how to thrive no matter where you’re working, giving concrete steps that help you focus on your priorities and keep good systems, routines, and tactics in place. Uptime explains how to make technology work for you and make “feeling on top of it” your new normal. It’s a blueprint for operating at the highest levels of productivity while enhancing your own personal well-being.

In a sweeping vision for the future of work, Neumeier shows that the massive problems of the 21st century are largely the consequence of a paradigm shift—a shuddering gear-change from the familiar Industrial Age to the unfamiliar “Robotic Age,” an era of increasing man-machine collaboration.   This change is creating the “Robot Curve,” an accelerating waterfall of obsolescence and opportunity that is currently reshuffling the fortunes of workers, companies, and national economies. It demonstrates how the cost and value of a unit of work go down as it moves from creative to skilled to rote, and, finally, to robotic. While the Robot Curve is dangerous to those with brittle or limited skills, it offers unlimited potential to those with metaskills—master skills that enable other skills.   Neumeier believes that the metaskills we need in a post-industrial economy are feeling (intuition and empathy), seeing (systems thinking), dreaming (applied imagination), making (design), and learning (autodidactics). These are not the skills we were taught in school. Yet they’re the skills we’ll need to harness the curve.   In explaining each of the metaskills, he offers encouragement and concrete advice for mastering their intricacies. At the end of the book he lays out seven changes that education can make to foster these important talents.   This is a rich, exciting book for forward-thinking educators, entrepreneurs, designers, artists, scientists, and future leaders in every field. It comes illustrated with clear diagrams and a 16-page color photo essay. Those who enjoy this book may be interested in its slimmer companion, The 46 Rules of Genius, also by Marty Neumeier.              Things you’ll learn in Metaskills:   - How to stay ahead of the “robot curve” - How to account for “latency” in your predictions - The 9 most common traps of systems behavior - How to distinguish among 4 types of originality - The 3 key steps in generating innovative solutions - 6 ways to think like Steve Jobs - How to recognize the 3 essential qualities of beauty - 24 aesthetic tools you can apply to any kind of work - 10 strategies to trigger breakthrough ideas - Why every team needs an X-shaped person - How to overcome the 5 forces arrayed against simplicity - 6 tests for measuring the freshness of a concept   - How to deploy the 5 principles of “uncluding” - The 10 tests for measuring great work - How to sell an innovative concept to an organization - 12 principles for constructing a theory of learning - How to choose a personal mission for the real world - The 4 levels of professional achievement - 7 steps for revolutionizing education From the back cover "Help! A robot ate my job!" If you haven't heard this complaint yet, you will. Today's widespread unemployment is not a jobs crisis. It's a talent crisis. Technology is taking every job that doesn't need a high degree of creativity, humanity, or leadership. The solution? Stay on top of the Robot Curve--a constant waterfall of obsolescence and opportunity fed by competition and innovation. Neumeier presents five metaskills--feeling, seeing, dreaming, making, and learning--that will accelerate your success in the Robotic Age.

When it comes to making your business more profitable and successful, don't look to re-engineering for answers. A better way is to apply the concept of kaizen, which mean making simple, common-sense improvements and refinements to critical business processes.The result: greater productivity, quality, and profits achieved with minimal cost, time, and effort invested. In this book, you discover how to maximize the results of kaizen by applying it to gemba--business processes involved in the manufacture of products and the rendering of services--the areas of your business where, as the author puts it, the "real action" takes place.

Building upon the success of best-sellers The Clean Coder and Clean Code, legendary software craftsman Robert C. "Uncle Bob" Martin shows how to bring greater professionalism and discipline to application architecture and design.   As with his other books, Martin's Clean Architecture doesn't merely present multiple choices and options, and say "use your best judgment": it tells you what choices to make, and why those choices are critical to your success. Martin offers direct, no-nonsense answers to key architecture and design questions like: What are the best high level structures for different kinds of applications, including web, database, thick-client, console, and embedded apps? What are the core principles of software architecture? What is the role of the architect, and what is he/she really trying to achieve? What are the core principles of software design? How do designs and architectures go wrong, and what can you do about it? What are the disciplines and practices of professional architects and designers? Clean Architecture is essential reading for every software architect, systems analyst, system designer, and software manager -- and for any programmer who aspires to these roles or is impacted by their work.

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. In iOS and macOS™ Performance Tuning, Marcel Weiher drills down to the code level to help you systematically optimize CPU, memory, I/O, graphics, and program responsiveness in any Objective-C, Cocoa, or CocoaTouch program.   This up-to-date guide focuses entirely on performance optimization for macOS and iOS. Drawing on 25 years of experience optimizing Apple device software, Weiher identifies concrete performance problems that can be discovered empirically via measurement. Then, based on a deep understanding of fundamental principles, he presents specific techniques for solving them.   Weiher presents insights you won’t find anywhere else, most of them applying to both macOS and iOS development. Throughout, he reveals common pitfalls and misconceptions about Apple device performance, explains the realities, and helps you reflect those realities in code that performs beautifully. Understand optimization principles, measurement, tools, pitfalls, and techniques Recognize when to carefully optimize, and when it isn’t worth your time Balance performance and encapsulation to create efficient object representations, communication, data access, and computation Avoid mistakes that slow down Objective-C programs and hinder later optimization Fix leaks and other problems with memory and resource management Address I/O issues associated with drives, networking, serialization, and SQLite Code graphics and UIs that don’t overwhelm limited iOS device resources Learn what all developers need to know about Swift performance

Building on their breakthrough bestsellers Lean Software Development and Implementing Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck’s latest book shows software leaders and team members exactly how to drive high-value change throughout a software organization—and make it stick. They go far beyond generic implementation guidelines, demonstrating exactly how to make lean work in real projects, environments, and companies.The Poppendiecks organize this book around the crucial concept of frames, the unspoken mental constructs that shape our perspectives and control our behavior in ways we rarely notice. For software leaders and team members, some frames lead to long-term failure, while others offer a strong foundation for success. Drawing on decades of experience, the authors present twenty-four frames that offer a coherent, complete framework for leading lean software development. You’ll discover powerful new ways to act as competency leader, product champion, improvement mentor, front-line leader, and even visionary.Systems thinking: focusing on customers, bringing predictability to demand, and revamping policies that cause inefficiency Technical excellence: implementing low-dependency architectures, TDD, and evolutionary development processes, and promoting deeper developer expertise Reliable delivery: managing your biggest risks more effectively, and optimizing both workflow and schedules Relentless improvement: seeing problems, solving problems, sharing the knowledge Great people: finding and growing professionals with purpose, passion, persistence, and pride Aligned leaders: getting your entire leadership team on the same page From the world’s number one experts in Lean software development, Leading Lean Software Development will be indispensable to everyone who wants to transform the promise of lean into reality—in enterprise IT and software companies alike.

"Ruby on Rails(tm) 3 Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example by Michael Hartl has become a must read for developers learning how to build Rails apps." Peter Cooper, Editor of Ruby Inside Using Rails 3, developers can build web applications of exceptional elegance and power. Although its remarkable capabilities have made Ruby on Rails one of the world's most popular web development frameworks, it can be challenging to learn and use. Ruby on Rails(tm) 3 Tutorial is the solution. Leading Rails developer Michael Hartl teaches Rails 3 by guiding you through the development of your own complete sample application using the latest techniques in Rails web development. Drawing on his experience building RailsSpace, Insoshi, and other sophisticated Rails applications, Hartl illuminates all facets of design and implementation including powerful new techniques that simplify and accelerate development. You'll find integrated tutorials not only for Rails, but also for the essential Ruby, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and SQL skills you'll need when developing web applications. Hartl explains how each new technique solves a real-world problem, and he demonstrates this with bite-sized code that's simple enough to understand, yet novel enough to be useful. Whatever your previous web development experience, this book will guide you to true Rails mastery. This book will help you Install and set up your Rails development environment Go beyond generated code to truly understand how to build Rails applications from scratch Learn Test Driven Development (TDD) with RSpec Effectively use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern Structure applications using the REST architecture Build static pages and transform them into dynamic ones Master the Ruby programming skills all Rails developers need Define high-quality site layouts and data models Implement registration and authentication systems, including validation and secure passwords Update, display, and delete users Add social features and microblogging, including an introduction to Ajax Record version changes with Git and share code at GitHub Simplify application deployment with Heroku

“Bernstein has become a guru to a peculiarly ’90s group: well-educated, Internet-powered people intent on investing well—and with minimal ‘help’ from professional Wall Street.”--Robert Barker, BusinessWeek William Bernstein is one of today’s most unlikely financial heroes. A practicing neurologist, he used his self-taught investment knowledge and research to build a popular investor’s website. Now, in the plain-spoken The Intelligent Asset Allocator, he shows independent investors how to build a diversified portfolio—without the help of a financial advisor. A breath of fresh air for investors tired of overly technical investment tomes, this book will help investors: Learn the risk/reward characteristics of various investment types Understand and apply portfolio theory for an improved risk/reward ratio Sharpen their focus, and take control of their investment programs William Bernstein runs a website—www.efficientfrontier.com—known for its quarterly journal of asset allocation and portfolio theory, Efficient Frontier.