Wydawca: K-i-s-publishing
User Experience Mapping. Enhance UX with User Story Map, Journey Map and Diagrams
Peter W. Szabo
Do you want to create better products and innovative solutions? User experience maps will help you understand your users and improve communication with them. Maps can also champion user-centricity within the organization.This book is the first print resource covering two advanced mapping techniques—the behavioral change map and the 4D UX map. You’ll explore user story maps, task models, and journey maps, while also creating wireflows, mental model maps, ecosystem maps, and solution maps. You’ll learn how to use insights from real users to create and improve your maps and products.The book delves into each major user experience map type, ranging from simple techniques based on sticky notes to more complex map types, and guides you in solving real-world problems with maps. You’ll understand how to create maps using a variety of software products, including Adobe Illustrator, Balsamiq Mockups, Axure RP, and Microsoft Word. Besides, you can draw each map type with pen and paper too!The book also showcases communication techniques and workshop ideas. You’ll learn about the Kaizen-UX management framework, developed by the author, now used by many agencies and in-house UX teams in Europe and beyond.Buying this book will give you hundreds of hours worth of user experience knowledge, from one of the world’s leading UX consultants. It will change your users’ world for the better. If you are still not convinced, we have hidden some cat drawings in it, just in case.
User Training for Busy Programmers. Develop effective software training classes quickly and easily
William Rice, William Rice
If you need to write a successful software training course and are unsure of how to start, then this book gets right to the point with clear, concise directions for developing an end-user software course. This step-by-step job aid walks you through the process of developing a successful, instructor-led software class. There are many good books on training theory. This book takes a more practical, condensed approach for when you don't have time to learn training theory. It is based on fifteen years of technical writing and training experience. In under 100 pages, the book guides you through the process of developing an end-user software course using a method that is tested, proven, and based upon sound instructional theory.
Using CiviCRM. Click here to enter text. - Second Edition
Erik Hommel, Joseph Murray, Brian P Shaughnessy
CiviCRM provides a powerful toolbox of resources to help organizations manage relationships with constituents. It is free, open source, web-based, and geared specifically to meet the constituent relationship management needs of the not-for-profit sector.Beginning with broader questions about how your organization is structured, which existing workflows are critical to your operations, and the overarching purpose of a centralized CRM, the book proceeds step by step through configuring CiviCRM, understanding the choices when setting up the system, importing data, and exploring the breadth of tools available throughout the system. You will see how to best use this software to handle event registrations, accept and track contributions, manage paid and free memberships and subscriptions, segment contacts, send bulk e-mails with open and click-through tracking, manage outreach campaigns, and set up case management workflows that match your organization’s roles and rules. With specific emphasis on helping implementers ask the right questions, consider key principals when setting up the system, and understand usage through case studies and examples, the book comprehensively reviews the functionality of CiviCRM and the opportunities it provides.With this book, you can help your organization better achieve its mission as a charity, industry association, professional society, political advocacy group, community group, government agency, or other similar organization and position yourself to become a power user who efficiently and effectively navigates the system.
Joseph Murray, Brian P Shaughnessy, Dave Greenberg
CiviCRM is a web-based, open source CRM system, designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental organizations. Elected officials, professional/trade associations, political campaigns and parties, government agencies, and other similar organizations are among its growing number of enthusiastic users. This book shows you how to harness CiviCRM’s impressive array of possibilities as you develop and execute performance-critical CRM strategies.This book will help you become familiar with the structure and main functions of CiviCRM. It will guide you in developing and successfully implementing a CRM strategy for your organization using detailed explanations and practical examples.Using CiviCRM walks you through developing a CRM Implementation Plan that is suited to your organization's size, culture, and needs. Readers will take away many constituent relationship management best practices and the knowledge of how to implement them with CiviCRM. Benefits of Using CiviCRM will be felt across your organization, and help it better achieve its mission.Overall, your organization will interact with constituents more effectively and handle staff growth and transitions by tracking all contacts and interactions with them in a system shared across the organization. Gathering and analyzing data about your constituents and their interactions with your organization will better inform your decisions.If your organization fundraises, you’ll be able to raise more money and reduce costs by identifying qualified prospects for targeted fundraising initiatives. We show how to attract new prospects and convert them to donors using online, direct mail, telemarketing and direct contact channels Using CiviCRM. You’ll learn why and how to set up and then grow your monthly donor program, as well as improve the frequency, average donation amounts, and retention rates of your donor base.With this book you’ll be able to reduce the burden on administrative resources by providing online payments and self-service options for event registrations and membership renewals. You can increase the likelihood your existing subscribers will become more involved with your organization, ensure more of your members show up to volunteer, identify potential leaders and steward their volunteer activitiesFinally, you'll be making relevant information easily available that quantifies what a great job you've been doing, including the number of hours that volunteers gave to your organization last year, the number of cases managed, or the number of new viral signups from your latest urgent action e-mail.
Ruben Verborgh, Max De Wilde
Data today is like gold - but how can you manage your most valuable assets? Managing large datasets used to be a task for specialists, but the game has changed - data analysis is an open playing field. Messy data is now in your hands! With OpenRefine the task is a little easier, as it provides you with the necessary tools for cleaning and presenting even the most complex data. Once it's clean, that's when you can start finding value.Using OpenRefine takes you on a practical and actionable through this popular data transformation tool. Packed with cookbook style recipes that will help you properly get to grips with data, this book is an accessible tutorial for anyone that wants to maximize the value of their data.This book will teach you all the necessary skills to handle any large dataset and to turn it into high-quality data for the Web. After you learn how to analyze data and spot issues, we'll see how we can solve them to obtain a clean dataset. Messy and inconsistent data is recovered through advanced techniques such as automated clustering. We'll then show extract links from keyword and full-text fields using reconciliation and named-entity extraction.Using OpenRefine is more than a manual: it's a guide stuffed with tips and tricks to get the best out of your data.
Andrew Zhu (Shudong Zhu), Matthew Fisher
Stable Diffusion is a game-changing AI tool that enables you to create stunning images with code. The author, a seasoned Microsoft applied data scientist and contributor to the Hugging Face Diffusers library, leverages his 15+ years of experience to help you master Stable Diffusion by understanding the underlying concepts and techniques.You’ll be introduced to Stable Diffusion, grasp the theory behind diffusion models, set up your environment, and generate your first image using diffusers. You'll optimize performance, leverage custom models, and integrate community-shared resources like LoRAs, textual inversion, and ControlNet to enhance your creations. Covering techniques such as face restoration, image upscaling, and image restoration, you’ll focus on unlocking prompt limitations, scheduled prompt parsing, and weighted prompts to create a fully customized and industry-level Stable Diffusion app. This book also looks into real-world applications in medical imaging, remote sensing, and photo enhancement. Finally, you'll gain insights into extracting generation data, ensuring data persistence, and leveraging AI models like BLIP for image description extraction.By the end of this book, you'll be able to use Python to generate and edit images and leverage solutions to build Stable Diffusion apps for your business and users.
Hafiz Muhammad I Sadiq, Irfan Sadiq
UX Design for Mobile. Design apps that deliver impressive mobile experiences
Pablo Perea, Pau Giner
User experience (UX) design provides techniques to analyze the real needs of your users and respond to them with products that are delightful to use. This requires you to think differently compared to traditional development processes, but also to act differently. In this book, you will be introduced to a pragmatic approach to exploring and creating mobile app solutions, reducing risks and saving time during their construction. This book will show you a working process to quickly iterate product ideas with low and high fidelity prototypes, based on professional tools from different software brands. You will be able to quickly test your ideas early in the process with the most adequate prototyping approach. You will understand the pros and cons of each approach, when you should use each of them, and what you can learn in each step of the testing process. You will also explore basic testing approaches and some more advanced techniques to connect and learn from your users. Each chapter will focus on one of the general steps needed to design a successful product according to the organization goals and the user needs. To achieve this, the book will provide detailed hands-on pragmatic techniques to design innovative and easy to use products. You will learn how to test your ideas in the early steps of the design process, picking up the best ideas that truly work with your users, rethinking those that need further refinement, and discarding those that don’t work properly in tests made with real users.By the end of the book, you will learn how to start exploring and testing your design ideas, regardless the size of the design budget.
UX for Enterprise ChatGPT Solutions. A practical guide to designing enterprise-grade LLMs
Richard H. Miller, Jeff Johnson
Many enterprises grapple with new technology, often hopping on the bandwagon only to abandon it when challenges emerge. This book is your guide to seamlessly integrating ChatGPT into enterprise solutions with a UX-centered approach.UX for Enterprise ChatGPT Solutions empowers you to master effective use case design and adapt UX guidelines through an engaging learning experience. Discover how to prepare your content for success by tailoring interactions to match your audience’s voice, style, and tone using prompt-engineering and fine-tuning. For UX professionals, this book is the key to anchoring your expertise in this evolving field. Writers, researchers, product managers, and linguists will learn to make insightful design decisions. You’ll explore use cases like ChatGPT-powered chat and recommendation engines, while uncovering the AI magic behind the scenes. The book introduces a and feeding model, enabling you to leverage feedback and monitoring to iterate and refine any Large Language Model solution. Packed with hundreds of tips and tricks, this guide will help you build a continuous improvement cycle suited for AI solutions.By the end, you’ll know how to craft powerful, accurate, responsive, and brand-consistent generative AI experiences, revolutionizing your organization’s use of ChatGPT.
UX for the Web. Build websites for user experience and usability
Marli Ritter, Cara Winterbottom
If you want to create web apps that are not only beautiful to look at, but also easy to use and fully accessible to everyone, including people with special needs, this book will provide you with the basic building blocks to achieve just that. The book starts with the basics of UX, the relationship between Human-Centered Design (HCD), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and the User-Centered Design (UCD) Process; it gradually takes you through the best practices to create a web app that stands out from your competitors. You’ll also learn how to create an emotional connection with the user to increase user interaction and client retention by different means of communication channels. We’ll guide you through the steps in developing an effective UX strategy through user research and persona creation and how to bring that UX strategy to life with beautiful, yet functional designs that cater for complex features with micro interactions. Practical UX methodologies such as creating a solid Information Architecture (IA), wireframes, and prototypes will be discussed in detail. We’ll also show you how to test your designs with representative users, and ensure that they are usable on different devices, browsers and assistive technologies. Lastly, we’ll focus on making your web app fully accessible from a development and design perspective by taking you through the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Alejandro Duarte, Vaadin Ltd
Vaadin is a mature, open-source, and powerful Java framework used to build modern web applications in plain Java. Vaadin brings back the fun of programming UI interfaces to the web universe. No HTML, no CSS, no JavaScript, no XML. Vaadin lets you implement web user interfaces using an object oriented model, similar to desktop technologies such as Swing and AWT.Vaadin 7 UI Design By Example: Beginner's Guide is an engaging guide that will teach you how to develop web applications in minutes. With this book, you will Develop useful applications and learn basics of Java web development. By the end of the book you will be able to build Java web applications that look fantastic.The book begins with simple examples using the most common Vaadin UI components and quickly move towards more complex applications as components are introduced chapter-by-chapter.Vaadin 7 UI Design By Example: Beginner's Guide shows you how to use Eclipse, Netbeans, and Maven to create Vaadin projects. It then demonstrates how to use labels, text fields, buttons, and other input components. Once you get a grasp of the basic usage of Vaadin, the book explains Vaadin theory to prepare you for the rest of the trip that will enhance your knowledge of Vaadin UI components and customization techniques.
Mike Van Niekerk
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is a programming language developed by Microsoft to automate tasks in MS Office applications. This book will help you to focus on the essential aspects of your role by automating mundane tasks in Excel and other Office applications. With comprehensive coverage of VBA delivered in the form of practice problems and bite-sized recipes, this book will help you to hit the ground running.Unlike most books that assume prior programming experience, this book starts with the fundamentals and gradually progresses to solving bigger problems.You’ll start by becoming familiar with VBA so that you can start recording macros right away. With this foundation in place, you’ll advance to using the full capabilities of the language as you apply loops, functions, and custom dialog boxes to design your own automation programs. You'll also get to grips with embedded macros and other advanced tools to enhance productivity and explore topics relating to app performance and security. Throughout this VBA book, you’ll cover multiple practice projects in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint while exploring tips and best practices to hone your skills.By the end of this book, you’ll have developed the skills you need to use VBA to create your own programs that control MS Office applications.
vBulletin: A Users Guide. Configure, manage and maintain your own vBulletin discussion forum
Kathy Kingsley-Hughes, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Ashley Busby
Written specifically to allow you to create a discussion forum, vBulletin, provides all of the tools, features and functionality for you to set up and develop a vibrant community. Because it specializes in this one aspect of your website, all the features are geared towards this goal, and you can leave the improvement and additions to the vBulletin developers while you get on with managing the rest of your website. If you are either already running a community forum based on vBulletin, or are planning on establishing one, then this is the book for you. This book will guide you through installing, configuring, managing and maintaining a vBulletin discussion forum on your own website. The book begins with the initial installation and configuration of vBulletin on your system. You will then go on a tour of vBulletin and its features, for both users and administrators. This will grow your understanding and familiarise you with the power and possibilities of vBulletin. vBulletin's Administration Control Panel is where you can control every aspect of your board. From users, forums and word filters to skins, templates and maintenance, everything can be done through the web-based control panel. The book devotes significant sections to covering these, getting you up to speed on the options available to you, and offering advice to help you make the right choices with your board administration. To make your forums stand out from the rest, we cover skins and templates to take your first steps in customising your forum. vBulletin is one of the most popular forum platforms available. Well known for its power and speed, it drives many of the most popular discussion forums on the Internet.
Charles E Mills Jr, Chuck Mills
Bahaaldine Azarmi, Jeff Vestal, Shay Banon
While natural language processing (NLP) is largely used in search use cases, this book aims to inspire you to start using vectors to overcome equally important domain challenges like observability and cybersecurity. The chapters focus mainly on integrating vector search with Elastic to enhance not only their search but also observability and cybersecurity capabilities.The book, which also features a foreword written by the founder of Elastic, begins by teaching you about NLP and the functionality of Elastic in NLP processes. Here you’ll delve into resource requirements and find out how vectors are stored in the dense-vector type along with specific page cache requirements for fast response times. As you advance, you’ll discover various tuning techniques and strategies to improve machine learning model deployment, including node scaling, configuration tuning, and load testing with Rally and Python. You’ll also cover techniques for vector search with images, fine-tuning models for improved performance, and the use of clip models for image similarity search in Elasticsearch. Finally, you’ll explore retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and learn to integrate ChatGPT with Elasticsearch to leverage vectorized data, ELSER's capabilities, and RRF's refined search mechanism.By the end of this NLP book, you’ll have all the necessary skills needed to implement and optimize vector search in your projects with Elastic.
Alasgar Hasanov, Debra Isaac, Philip Dobree
Unlock Houdini’s procedural power to create dynamic simulations and cinematic renders with expert guidance from Alasgar Hasanov, a VFX artist with more than a decade of experience crafting CGI and visual effects for films, television, and commercials.In this comprehensive guide, he demonstrates easy workflows for complex effects, teaches you how to think procedurally, and makes learning Houdini both fun and rewarding. Through step-by-step tutorials, real-world examples, and insider tips, you’ll master Houdini’s renowned node-based workflow. You’ll also learn how to control procedural forces to simulate natural phenomena and produce compelling, visually striking renders, giving you the tools to bring your creative visions to life.This book provides a solid foundation in Houdini FX fundamentals for beginners, while also helping more experienced artists push the boundaries of innovation. It is designed to be an indispensable companion on your journey to building a strong foundation for future growth as a Houdini artist.By the end of the book, you will be comfortable creating procedural setups, running simulations, and rendering your own creative effects in Houdini.*Email sign-up and proof of purchase required
Greg Lim
Software development is evolving rapidly, and working effectively with AI is becoming a core skill. Vibe Coding with Cursor, Windsurf & Lovable introduces a practical, AI-first approach to building applications by guiding intelligent coding agents instead of writing every line of code manually.Through hands-on examples, you’ll learn how to create applications from scratch using Cursor, structure projects with specifications and to-do lists, manage code with Git, and add automated tests. You’ll then explore Lovable’s no-code and low-code workflows to build and deploy full-stack apps, before moving on to Windsurf to analyze and extend existing codebases.By the end of this book, you’ll have a repeatable, professional workflow for building and shipping real-world applications faster, combining the speed of AI with sound engineering practices.
Lance Phillips, Stefania Marangoni
Micro content dominates social media marketing, but subpar editing and low-quality videos can shrink your audience. Elevate your social media game with DaVinci Resolve - the world’s most trusted name in color grading that has been used to grade Hollywood films, TV shows, and commercials. Version 18 enables you to edit, compose VFX, mix sound, and deliver videos for different platforms, including social media and the web.You’ll learn the basics of using DaVinci Resolve 18 to create video content, by first gaining an overview of creating a complete short video for social media distribution directly from within the “Cut” page. You’ll discover advanced editing, VFX composition, color grading, and sound editing techniques to enhance your content and fix common video content issues that occur while using consumer cameras or mobile phones.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to use DaVinci Resolve to edit, fix, finish, and publish short-form video content directly to social media sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Vimeo.
Hussin Khan, HaZ Dulull
Virtual Filmmaking with Unreal Engine 5 is the first Unreal Engine book to guide you through the complete process of virtual film production. Encompassing the full spectrum of filmmaking, this book demonstrates the use of an industry-standard tool used by studios such as Disney, ILM, DNEG, and Framestore.Walking through the process systematically, you’ll collect references and create a simple storyboard to plan your shots. You'll create virtual environments, import 3D models and add materials and textures to build photorealistic, dynamic worlds. You'll also create actors using highly customizable MetaHumans, understand how to import, re-target, and animate them. You’ll bring it all together with cinematic lighting and camera animation before exporting your film.By the end of this book, you’ll have discovered new tools for your toolkit to work on your virtual film projects in Unreal Engine 5, leveraging Quixel Megascans, Lumen, Nanite, and MetaHuman technology.
Virtual Reality Blueprints. Create compelling VR experiences for mobile and desktop
Charles Palmer, John Williamson
Are you new to virtual reality? Do you want to create exciting interactive VR applications? There's no need to be daunted by the thought of creating interactive VR applications, it's much easier than you think with this hands-on, project-based guide that will take you through VR development essentials for desktop and mobile-based games and applications. Explore the three top platforms—Cardboard VR, Gear VR, and OculusVR —to design immersive experiences from scratch.You’ll start by understanding the science-fiction roots of virtual reality and then build your first VR experience using Cardboard VR. You'll then delve into user interactions in virtual space for the Google Cardboard then move on to creating a virtual gallery with Gear VR. Then you will learn all about virtual movements, state machines, and spawning while you shoot zombies in the Oculus Rift headset. Next, you'll construct a Carnival Midway, complete with two common games to entertain players.Along the way, you will explore the best practices for VR development, review game design tips, discuss methods for combating motion sickness and identify alternate uses for VR applications
Alfonso V. Romero, Alfonso Vidal Romero
The furore around virtualization is taking the technology world by storm and is a must for efficient utilization of network server capacity, storage administration, energy, and capital. VirtualBox is free and this brings down your upfront costs for an agile data center. VirtualBox will transform your IT infrastructure into a lean Data Center on a Windows XP/7 or Ubuntu Linux platform. Although VirtualBox has grown by leaps and bounds, there is not enough documentation to guide you through its features and implementation.This hands-on guide gives you a thorough introduction to this award-winning virtualization product. It will help you to implement the right virtual environment for you. Additionally, this book will help you set up an environment that will work for your system. You will learn to architect and deploy your first virtual machine without being overwhelmed by technical details.This practical book unveils the robust capabilities and easy-to-use graphical interface of VirtualBox to help you to effectively administer and use virtual machines in a home/office environment. You begin by creating your first virtual machine on a Windows/Linux guest operating system and installing guest additions. The book then goes on to discuss the various formats that VirtualBox supports and how it interacts with other formats. The comprehensive instructions will help you to work with all the networking modes offered by VirtualBox. Virtual appliances will be explained in detail—how they help to reduce installation time for virtual machines and run them from VirtualBox.By the end of this book you will be able to run your own headless VirtualBox server, to create, manage, and run virtual machines in that server from a remote PC.
Aristides Bouras
This course begins with a fundamental overview of how computers operate, setting a solid foundation for your learning. You'll then delve into the essentials of Visual Basic, exploring integrated development environments and necessary software packages. As you progress, you'll tackle basic algorithmic concepts, variables, constants, and how to handle input and output efficiently. Moving forward, the course introduces you to control structures, starting with sequence control, and advancing through various decision structures, including single, dual, and multiple-alternative decisions. You'll gain practical experience with flowcharts and decision-making processes, equipping you with the skills to manage complex programming scenarios. The latter part of the course focuses on loop control structures, both simple and nested, and teaches you to implement them effectively through practical exercises and flowcharts. Finally, you'll explore advanced topics such as data structures, including one-dimensional and two-dimensional arrays, and dictionaries. The course also covers subprograms and object-oriented programming, ensuring you have a comprehensive understanding of Visual Basic. With a practical approach, this course is designed to build your confidence in programming, enabling you to tackle real-world problems with ease.