Voices of Experience Book Review: Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? - ICE

Monday, 5 June 2006

Voices of Experience Book Review: Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?

Book Review for Waiting for your Cat to Bark?

As part of the Voices of Experience project, I'm going to begin doing some book reviews. Actually, this probably has more to do with my completion of my MBA studies than anything else. I now have time to read something other than Harvard Business School cases and whatnot. One of my professors told me that "Crown Cork & Seal" is the "secret handshake" of MBA's. Any other MBA's out there want to confirm or deny this? *grin*

Anyway, what better way to kick off this new review feature than with a book by long time experience advocates, Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg? Their new book, "Waiting for your Cat to Bark?" is their latest attempt to smack some sense into the business world and marketers in particular.

Head on over to our newly minted book review section or jump right into the review of Waiting for your Cat to Bark?

There are a ton of extras included with this book as well, including a $50 credit good for Yahoo! Search Marketing. But there's a slight catch. You'll have to read the review to find out more (that's what is know as the "teaser").

Even if you don't read the review, you should definitely consider purchasing this book. It is jam-packed with information on improving your business' customer experience. Granted, the Eisenberg's and I share a specific world-view about the value of experience so I am unabashedly biased in favor of this book's main thesis. I can't remember if I knew about the Eisenbergs back in 2001 when I first wrote up my ideas on the value of experience vs. advertising (PDF) . Even if I wasn't aware of them by name, they are the godfathers of this movement and deserve a lot of credit in helping advance the cause of "experience." Waiting for your Cat to Bark is an excellent next step in pursuit of this goal.

Technorati Tags: Customer Experience, User Experience, Voices of Experience, Book Review, Waiting for your Cat to Bark, Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffery Eisenberg, Lisa T. Davis, Seth Godin, Steve Krug

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Posted By EGM at 2:08 PM

Replies

29 Jun 2006

olivier blanchard
I scored a free copy at WOMBAT 2 last week, but haven't had time to read it yet. It looks pretty cool though.

12 Jun 2006

EGM
And they still teach it today. Go figure. :)

11 Jun 2006
Lucinda
OMG! i read that case in business school in 1989!!!

6 Jun 2006

EGM
I think I'll leave a suggestion for the script's author that I'd like to have the same control over the sub-category pages as I do over the main page. That is, I'd love to be able to hand pick say 10 books that I could recommend in each category. From there, you could let the algorithm work its magic. I too wish that tagging would catch on more broadly at Amazon, but unfortunately, I don't think the concept of tagging has cross the chasm yet. When I see tags like "Would be great for Uncle Charlie's birthday" I know we have a long way to go. *grin*

6 Jun 2006

Brent
Well, my ideas don't seem fully baked yet. But I guess it depends on what you can query on to get those results. I think the superior way to go is to use the tagging system that Amazon has started. Unfortunately there's only like 7 books that people have tagged with information architecture or ia. Another way to go is to key off some of the list mania or so you'd like to... lists about information architecture. The problem there is that there's some cross-over into usability and other slices of this. The good thing about those two methods is that there's already been a human filter to make some sense of what belongs there. I think Amazon's query of Information Architecture finds instances of Information and Architecture but not necessarily both in context. Where's Peter Morville and Lou Rosenfeld when you need them? At any rate...I'd much prefer hand-picked items, because they're at the essence at why social networks and word of mouth marketing works. If I respect your opinion and typically like what you like, I'm much more likely to buy something that you bought and recommended. At any rate...keep up the great blog. I love it! Brent

5 Jun 2006

EGM
Point well taken Brent. I put the bookstore together with a script called Associate-O-Matic. It has a very nice interface and set up, but it's pretty limited in the ability to hand-craft a store. The points of customization are in selecting the titles that appear on the main page and a few other choices. I decided to hand-create a reviews section to be able to address some of the personalization issues and talk about the books that I really want to talk about. The IA section is certainly a little funky, but most of the other sections seem to provide a pretty reasonable selection of books from the discipline in question. Perhaps "Information Architecture" isn't a good query to throw at Amazon. Do you have any suggestions?

5 Jun 2006

Brent
Hey....I'm definitely interested in reading this now. I'm a big fan of ICE and read it regularly. However, I was a little disappointed when I went to your bookstore. It doesn't look like you're culled these titles with any specific human intelligence but rather an Amazon API. The Information Architecture section listed books for upgrading/repairing PCs and Service-Oriented Architecture for what I presume is setting up corporate networks. Tsk. Tsk. Not quite up to Evil Genius standards in creating a positive customer experience! Let me know when you've created a more personal list. : ) Brent