Full of fun facts you’ll want to share with all your friends, Volume Six follows the Design Team as they take on ever more unreasonable orders from the man upstairs—“An Animal That Uses Social Media,” “An Animal That Combines Five Past Orders,” and a collaborative project with the Plant Department: “My One and Only Cinderella” and “A Long Floral Friendship”! Don’t miss this newest volume packed with funny and useful tidbits about the animal kingdom and the world of plants and be sure to check out the popular Encyclopedia of Real Animals!
In heaven’s Animal Design Department, designers create a variety of new animals daily while contending with the unreasonable requests of their client: God. Funny, interesting, and full of useful information, this series answers questions such as, “Why can’t unicorns exist?”, “What makes an animal taste delicious?”, “What’s the most powerful creature in the ocean?”, and, “Bird versus snake: who would win?” You won’t believe it’s a manga series when you read up on the featured animals in the included encyclopedia entries. Heavenly Design Team will make your next trip to the zoo or aquarium 100 times more fun!
God created the heavens and the Earth -- but, little-known fact, he outsourced the animals to the office of Heaven's Design Team! This hilarious and educational manga features weird real-life animals and puts even some humdrum critters in a strange new light. IT’S A DEPARTMENTAL MASHUP! The arrival of the Plant Department throws the animal designers for a loop when the Client makes a joint request of the two teams. Can this hodgepodge of eccentric personalities pull off such a challenging collaboration? And with more ludicrous projects on the horizon, one designer may just be pushed over the edge…!
A “thrilling adventure story" (San Francisco Chronicle) that brings to life the astronomers who in the 1700s embarked upon a quest to calculate the size of the solar system, and paints a vivid portrait of the collaborations, rivalries, and volatile international politics that hindered them at every turn. • From the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a momentous occasion: the first transit of Venus between the Earth and the Sun in more than a century. Through that observation, astronomers could calculate the size of the solar system—but only if they could compile data from many different points of the globe, all recorded during the short period of the transit. Overcoming incredible odds and political strife, astronomers from Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, and the American colonies set up observatories in the remotest corners of the world, only to be thwarted by unpredictable weather and warring armies. Fortunately, transits of Venus occur in pairs; eight years later, they would have another opportunity to succeed. Thanks to these scientists, neither our conception of the universe nor the nature of scientific research would ever be the same.
CAN THIS CRISIS BE AVERTED? A virus has taken over a production plant up in Heaven! With no time to lose, Shimoda must put heads together with the designers to make sure the threat is contained before too much real damage is done. They hatch a plan to go back in time to earlier that morning to prevent the takeover, but will their efforts be enough?!
Most programmers' fear of user interface (UI) programming comes from their fear of doing UI design. They think that UI design is like graphic design—the mysterious process by which creative, latte-drinking, all-black-wearing people produce cool-looking, artistic pieces. Most programmers see themselves as analytic, logical thinkers instead—strong at reasoning, weak on artistic judgment, and incapable of doing UI design. In this brilliantly readable book, author Joel Spolsky proposes simple, logical rules that can be applied without any artistic talent to improve any user interface, from traditional GUI applications to websites to consumer electronics. Spolsky's primary axiom, the importance of bringing the program model in line with the user model, is both rational and simple. In a fun and entertaining way, Spolky makes user interface design easy for programmers to grasp. After reading User Interface Design for Programmers, you'll know how to design interfaces with the user in mind. You'll learn the important principles that underlie all good UI design, and you'll learn how to perform usability testing that works.
You'll want to tell everyone all about the fascinating animal facts you'll learn in this newest volume! In heaven's design department, the team collaborates to come up with all kinds of interesting creatures to meet their divine client's requirements. This thought-provoking and useful dive into the sometimes-comedic animal world introduces concepts like "birds that don't lay eggs"; "vegetarian piranhas" and "nightmarish animals". Don't miss the encyclopedia of real animals at the end of each chapter!
The Design Department is at it again, creating new animals with their free ideas, based on the client's unreasonable orders. This time, the client wants to see "an organism that will eat anything," "the most fashionable bird," "a creature that can protect against global warming," "the strongest living thing in the world," and much more! It's another volume packed full of confounding, bewildering creature creation!
The authors of Thoughtful Interaction Design go beyond the usual technical concerns of usability and usefulness to consider interaction design from a design perspective. The shaping of digital artifacts is a design process that influences the form and functions of workplaces, schools, communication, and culture; the successful interaction designer must use both ethical and aesthetic judgment to create designs that are appropriate to a given environment. This book is not a how-to manual, but a collection of tools for thought about interaction design. Working with information technology—called by the authors "the material without qualities"—interaction designers create not a static object but a dynamic pattern of interactivity. The design vision is closely linked to context and not simply focused on the technology. The authors' action-oriented and context-dependent design theory, drawing on design theorist Donald Schön's concept of the reflective practitioner, helps designers deal with complex design challenges created by new technology and new knowledge. Their approach, based on a foundation of thoughtfulness that acknowledges the designer's responsibility not only for the functional qualities of the design product but for the ethical and aesthetic qualities as well, fills the need for a theory of interaction design that can increase and nurture design knowledge. From this perspective they address the fundamental question of what kind of knowledge an aspiring designer needs, discussing the process of design, the designer, design methods and techniques, the design product and its qualities, and conditions for interaction design.
Have you ever considered the incredible odds against Christianity? Over two thousand years ago, the self-proclaimed Son of God and His band of disciples first preached the Gospel in a small Roman province. From there, the Good News spread north, south, east, and west. It crossed oceans, climbed mountains, and traveled on horseback and footpath over every imaginable terrain. Within just a few generations Christianity grew from an obscure, regional uprising into a worldwide movement through the multiplication of local churches. Church Planting Thresholds explores both the why's and the how's of church planting, providing "Thresholds" that serve as progress mileposts along the church planting journey. This simple guide will encourage ordinary Christians as they seek to fulfill the Great Commission through planting churches.
