We read a lot at Seismonaut. Our expense account for literature is literally expensive. Today a new batch of books arrived. Though we’re fast readers, I’m afraid the thorough verdict is still out. But let me just briefly describe what we’ve bought and why we’re interested in these books specifically.

Anthropology and the Individual: A Material Culture Perspective (Materializing Culture)

As we work quite a lot with user studies and socio-ethnographic methods, anthropology is an important field of science to us. Anthropology and the Individual” shows how the study of the individual can provide insights into society without losing a sense of the particularity of the person. Our designers look forward to this read.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

As someone who has read Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind and loved it, this was a must-buy. Personally, I’ve been very interested in motivational factors – intrinsic as well as extrinsic – since writing my MD about that exact area. What motivates us in general? What makes people want to contribute to the open source community for free? Why do people write Wikipedia articles? Those are some of the most important questions when working with online participation.

Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online

Netnography is a whole new discipline that combines ethnography and online research. It’s an area of expertise we’re building at Seismonaut, since we believe it’s an important skill when doing social business design. Kozinets who coined the word will hopefully make us smarter on how to study cultures and communities online, while keeping the ethical conduct high.

Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges

The Enterprise 2.0 phenomenon has been kicked around for the last 3-4 years or so, without any reference work that lays out the foundation of what it’s all about. I’m sure Andrew McAfee nails it with this book. To us Enterprise 2.0 is one of the most significant areas of any future-oriented business to explore, which makes this an important piece of literature.

Presentation Zen Design

I am doing more than 50 talks a year and think of myself as an inspiring and passionate speaker (who mostly manages to keep people awake). However, I also think it’s important to constantly learn how to improve, both presentation technically and rhetorically, as well as graphically. And it is the last thing Garr Reynolds delves into with his latest book. I love to tweak and play around with Keynote to create the most fitting slides to support my talk. I count on this book to improve my slides.

Design der sælger (Design that sells)

Well, actually this isn’t a book (yet). However, this is the master thesis by Jess Andreas Olsen, Seismonaut’s interaction designer. In the thesis Jess describes what it takes to sell online, in terms of interaction design, persuasive design, aesthetics, text and so on. I haven’t read it yet, but believe e-commerce has a lot of unfulfilled potential that very few e-commerce sites exploit today. Jess is undoubtfully the man to ask, if you need advice on developing or improving your online shopping experience.