Badass
Making Users Awesome
by Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates · first published 2015
86% recommend14% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Reframes product, documentation and marketing work around making users succeed rather than praising the product. Approachable and practical for developers, product people and teachers who want users to feel capable.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The answers to what makes a sustainable bestseller aren't in the successful product. The answers are in the successful product's users. It's not the product success that matters most, it's the successful results of those who use it. Repeatedly. Consistently. Sustainably. The answer to a sustainable bestseller is to shift the focus from making an awesome product to making an awesome user of that product. The answer lies is helping users become badass not just at using the product, but at whatever it is the product can help them do and be. And some of those answers are surprising, counterintuiti
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In case you were not aware, Kathy Sierra has a new book! http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/...
on “Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot From Skater Culture, Just Not Meritocracy” ↗Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/...
on “Books on Entrepreneurship” ↗…day, flip through 3-4 pages, rinse, repeat. * User Story Mapping - Extremely memorable book - it gives you a pretty clear field guide on prioritization, empathy, communication ... just a great book. * Badass by Kathy Sierra - I flip through this book again and again. It is gospel truth about what motivates humans. * The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design - IDEO's most practical book. (Close second: Designing…
on “Alan Kay's answer to ‘what are some forgotten books programmers should read?’” ↗I don't know any courses personally. But highly recommend the book Badass by Kathy Sierra[1]. It won't necessarily tell you everything you need to know about product management. But it will tell you what you need to about really creating good product. Which is the core of the…
on “Ask HN: Does anyone knows where to get product management free courses?” ↗Ha! Just had that binge too... ... Here's what I like: On the business end: - Badass by Kathy Sierra - Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross - Traction by Gabriel Weinberg - Cold Calling Early Customers by Robert Graham - Learn or Die by Edward Hess On "refining your thought process": -…
on “Ask HN: Book Recommendations?” ↗…content marketing puts the priority on learning first. If the Bit folks are reading this and interested in improving, I suggest reading Kathy Sierra's book and watching her talks. https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4dNaflEgP4
on “Javascript utility libraries to know in 2018” ↗On a related topic, I found the Badass users book to be very insightful and practical: https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp...
on “Your users will do what you make easy” ↗“Badass: Making Users Awesome” by Kathy Sierra. I don’t see it often in lists like these. But it’s an awesome and approachable book for framing your products, services, user journey, and marketing from the viewpoint…
on “Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?” ↗I'm a big fan of Kathy Sierra's "Badass: Making Users Awesome" [1] Less about UI but really focused on what users feel and how they experience what you build. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp...
on “Ask HN: What topics are good for a UI/UX Primer?” ↗I've mainly been learning by doing (and failing), though I've read these books which helped solve problems I had at the time: - Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra - Obviously Awesome by April Dunford - The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick - Every book Seth Godin has written, particularly This is Marketing - Deploy Empathy by…
on “Bootstrapping Atlassian: $10k In Credit Card Debt To $20M In Revenue In 5 years” ↗- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick - Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen - Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
on “Ask HN: What are the best books on talking to users?” ↗…to manage teams and build software. See above. * Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug: https://sensible.com/dont-make-me-think/ Easy ways to think about usability, focusing on webapps. Short and easy. * Badass: Making Users Awesome, by Kathy Sierra: http://seriouspony.com/badass-users-the-book Will help you put yourself in the shoes of your users and think about how to build software they will love. Short and…
on “Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?” ↗I recommend Kathy Sierra’s Badass, making users awesome. The gist is, no one cares about the thing you're trying to sell. anyone considering your offering is trying to get something done. Help them get their job done so well that they…
on “Ask HN: How to learn how to sell?” ↗…documentation". While readable code is great, I still don't want to have to read the whole codebase to figure out how to use something. I've found it useful to take lessons from Kathy Sierra's excellent "BADASS: Making Users Awesome" book. Look, folks, people don't want to use your library because the library itself is awesome - they want to use it to make something awesome for themselves, or to do something…
on “Teach, Don’t Tell (2013)” ↗Badass: Making Users Awesomeby Kathy Sierra https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24737268-badass is a good book, though its primary focus is more to do with how to work out what kind of UI to build not the…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?” ↗