From Publishers Weekly
The premise behind Roam’s book is simple: anybody with a pen and a scrap of paper can use visual thinking to work through complex business ideas. Management consultant and lecturer Roam begins with a watershed moment: asked, at the last minute, to give a talk to top government officials, he sketched a diagram on a napkin. The clarity and power of that image allowed him to communicate directly with his audience. From this starting point, Roam has developed a remarkably comprehensive system of ideas. Everything in the book is broken down into steps, providing the reader with tools and rules to facilitate picture making. There are the four steps of visual thinking, the six ways of seeing and the SQVID– a clumsy acronym for a full brain visual work out designed to focus ideas. Nonetheless, for forward-thinking management types, there is enough content in these pages to drive many a brainstorming session. Illus. (Mar 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

My Take: This book is absolutely simple and fun to read, but equally convincing how the techniques can be apply to our modem day world of problem-solving. Recently I had an ecounter, where a simple slide of key items in a presentation, works so much better than 10 of slides trying to describe the matter. And more importantly this book follow the natural pattern of how our brain function, making the methods straight-foward and natural to follow.

There are some great resources on the book site, including some quick sheets.

Topics covered:

• User patterns
• Designing for scanning
• Wise use of copy
• Navigation design
• Home page layout
• Usability testing

–This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Book Description
Yesterday’s Web looked far different from today’s Web, and tomorrow’s Web will look more different still. Amidst all of this change, however, one aspect of Web use remains the same: The sites that offer the best, easiest, most intuitive experience are the ones people visit again and again. To ensure that your sites provide that experience, you need this essential guide from usability guru Steve Krug that distills his years of on-the-job experience into a practical primer on the do’s and don’ts of good Web design.

In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters–in the same wry and entertaining style as the original–that explain why people really leave Web sites (Usability as Common Courtesy), how to make sites usable and accessible (Web Accessibility, CSS, and You), and the art of surviving executive design whims (Help! My Boss Wants Me to ____), plus a new preface and updated recommended reading.

This is a pretty good book for a newcomer to the Ajax topic, just get a bit repetitive at the start, but it does help to get into your head. The book make it easy to digest. It really open me to a paradigm shift and Ruby on Rails.

I just did my first Ajax function in CMS with prototype (See my del.icio.us)