Books about Justifying from Amazon.com

You just know that an improvement of the user interface will reap rewards, but how do you justify the expense and the labor and the time-guarantee a robust ROI!-ahead of time? How do you decide how much of an investment should be funded? And what is the best way to sell usability to others?

In this completely revised and new edition, Randolph G. Bias (University of Texas at Austin, with 25 years' experience as a usability practitioner and manager) and Deborah J. Mayhew (internationally recognized usability consultant and author of two other seminal books including The Usability Engineering Lifecycle) tackle these and many other problems. It has been updated to cover cost-justifying usability for Web sites and intranets, for the complex applications we have today, and for a host of products-offering techniques, examples, and cases that are unavailable elsewhere. No matter what type of product you build, whether or not you are a cost-benefit expert or a born salesperson, this book has the tools that will enable you to cost-justify the appropriate usability investment.

·Includes contributions by a host of experts involved in this work, including Aaron Marcus, Janice Rohn, Chauncey Wilson, Nigel Bevan, Dennis Wixon, Clare-Marie Karat, Susan Dray, Charles Mauro, and many others;
·Includes actionable ideas for every phase of the software development process;
·Includes case studies from inside a variety of companies;
·Includes ideas from "the other side of the table," software executives who hold the purse strings, who offer thoughts on which proposals for usability support they've funded, and which ones they've declined..
Price: $52.24 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The question of how to justify our practices is central in both general and Jewish philosophy In this book Daniel Rynhold critiques abstract approaches to justifying Jewish practice from the history of Jewish philosophy. Instead, he suggests a more practical model for justifying practices that he terms the Priority of Practice approach, illustrating thereby how Jewish philosophy can make a genuine contribution to general philosophical debates..
Price: $118.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book was written to provide a tool for organizations to use when justifying the need for e-mail capture technology for the purpose of capturing and managing knowledge. E-mail capture is just one facet of capturing knowledge within an organization. This book mentions other methods, but the primary focus is on e-mail capture. The book is a direct derivative of peer-reviewed research during my doctoral studies. Over 500 references were used when researching the background for this book. Over 100 of these references are listed in the back of the book to use in your own justifications for an e-mail capture system to be used for knowledge management. Return on Investment (ROI) is a difficult monster to calculate at times. This book shows a simple method that executives understand. Time equals money. The research identifies the time spent performing many different tasks using e-mail. The time is used for calculating potential cost savings and ROI for different size organizations..
Price: $34.06 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Today's increasingly competitive and fiscally constrained business environment is fostering the need to cut costs and justify expenditures. Usability engineering is not yet universally accepted, nor is it yet an integrated aspect of software engineering, and would-be usability champions need more help than ever to win the funding necessary to introduce and promote usability engineering techniques.
Cost-Justifying Usability is the first book to address pragmatically and in detail the question of how usability engineering professionals and their managers can cost-justify their proposals and efforts. The book offers specific techniques for quantifying costs and benefits, making a convincing and successful business case for investment in usability engineering.
This book comprises a thorough and well-integrated collection of chapters written by experienced and prominent usability experts. Taken together, these chapters provide readers with:
An overall framework for cost-justifying usability engineering programs that can be applied to any context
An examination of the unique factors and issues in cost-justifying usability efforts for three very different types of organizations: vendor companies, international development organizations, and contractor companies
Case studies of successful cost-justification efforts
A look at some special issues regarding cost-justification of usability, including"discount"usability engineering techniques, success factors for introducing usability engineering into development organizations, specialized tools for usability cost-justification, and a look to the future of usability engineering
Practical and effective insight for human factors professionals, interface designers, software development managers, and human factors educators.
Price: $20.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"...Nolan argues that America's therapeutic culture has recently moved from the cultural realm of "symbols and codes" to penetrate the institutions of the modern American state. By delineating sharply between the culture of the therapeutic and therapeutic poicymaking, Nolan's probing work provides an important new methodological frame with which to study the therapeutic"
—American Studies International

The United States has always been profoundly conflicted about the role and utility of its government. Simmering just beneath the surface of heated public discussions over the appropriate scope and size of government are foundational questions about the very purpose of the state, and the basis of its authority. America's changing and diversifying cultural climate makes common agreement about the government's raison d'être all the more difficult.

In The Therapeutic State, James Nolan shows us how these unresolved dilemmas have coalesced at century's end. Today the American state, faced with a steady decline in public confidence, has embraced a therapeutic code of moral understanding to legitimize its very existence.

By ranging widely across education, criminal justice, welfare, political rhetoric, and civil law, Nolan convincingly illustrates how the state increasingly turns to the therapeutic ethos as a justification for its programs and policies, a development that will profoundly influence the relationship between government and citizenry. In a tone refreshingly free of polemic, Nolan charts the dialectic relationship between culture and politics and, against the backdrop of striking historical contrasts, gives example after example of the emergence of therapeutic sensibilities in the processes of the American state.

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Price: $16.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

`This is a thoughtful, well-crafted, easily accessible book. It will be a treat to teach from, as it creates a series of exercises that reflexively build on one another, as the student moves from assignment to assignment, chapter to chapter, a solid body of knowledge and a nuanced set of interpretive tools are developed. I believe this book would work well for a variety of methodology courses, and I would direct students and colleagues to use it' - Norman K Denzin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

`A text which students setting out on a masters or doctoral research journey will find invaluable' - Professor Peter Gilroy, Institute of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University

As a comprehensive and practical guide for students, this book presents clear and straightforward information and advice. The authors present a perspective on methodology as a process, which begins from the moment that curiosity about a topic is aroused. Although in dissertations and theses methodology is normally reported within a single methodology chapter, the authors show how every element of the account - from the framing of Research Questions to the drawing of Conclusions - is a function of methodology. Methodology describes what lies behind every single decision made in the creation of a research study.

Methodology is about justifying the decisions researchers make in selecting and using their methods. The successful dissertation persuades the reader that what the researcher chose to do was not only appropriate but also necessary.

The authors distinguish clearly between methods and methodology, and describe in detail how their relationship is articulated in practice. Methodology is not just a chapter, but a process, which begins from day one of research design.

The text is supported by a series of activities, which will contribute directly to the writing of students' own methodology chapters. The authors refer to a wide range of other contemporary research guides, and include useful suggested Further Reading in specific areas.

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Price: $4.04 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The argument of this book is that judgment, understood as the whole process of bringing justice, is the primary metaphor of atonement, with others, such as victory, redemption and sacrifice, subordinate to it. Judgment also provides the proper context for understanding penal substitution and the call to repentance, baptism, eucharist, and holiness..
Price: $24.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Justifying Taxes offers readers some of the elements of a democratic tax law, considered within its political and philosophical context in order to determine the extent of legitimate tax obligations. The objective is to revisit some of the issues in the dogmatics of tax law from the viewpoint of a critical citizen, always ready to ask questions about the justification underlying her obligations, and especially about her paramount burden, viz., the payment of certain amounts of money. Within this purview, special attention is paid to the general principles of taxation.
The argument is complemented by a detailed reconstruction of constitutional reasoning in tax matters, close attention being paid to the jurisprudence of the Spanish Tribunal Constitucional.
Readership: Legal scholars, political scientists and philosophers. Especially recommended to graduate and undergraduate students of Tax Law, Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence, Philosophy of Law and Political Theory.
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Price: $150.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]