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UX for Lean Startups: Faster, Smarter User Experience Research and Design
by Laura Kleinp>Great user experiences (UX) are essential for products today, but designing one can be a lengthy and expensive process. With this practical, hands-on book, you’ll learn how to do it faster and smarter using Lean UX techniques. UX expert Laura Klein shows you what it takes to gather valuable input from customers, build something they’ll truly love, and reduce the time it takes to get your product to market.No prior experience in UX or design is necessary to get started. If you’re an entrepreneur or an innovator, this book puts you right to work with proven tips and tools for researching, identifying, and designing an intuitive, easy-to-use product.Determine whether people will buy your product before you build itListen to your customers throughout the product’s lifecycleUnderstand why you should design a test before you design a productGet nine tools that are critical to designing your productDiscern the difference between necessary features and nice-to-havesLearn how a Minimum Viable Product affects your UX decisionsUse A/B testing in conjunction with good UX practicesSpeed up your product development process without sacrificing quality
UX for the Web
by Marli Ritter Cara WinterbottomLearn how UX and design thinking can make your site stand out from the rest of the internet. About This Book • Learn everything you need to know about UX for your Web Design. • Design B2B, B2C websites that stand out from the competitors with this guide • Enhance your business by improving customer accessibility and retention. Who This Book Is For If you're a designer, developer, or just someone who has the desire to create websites that are not only beautiful to look at but also easy to use and fully accessible to everyone, including people with special needs, UX for the Web will provide you with the basic building blocks to achieve just that. What You Will Learn • Discover the fundamentals of UX and the User-Centered Design (UCD) Process. • Learn how UX can enhance your brand and increase user retention • Learn how to create the golden thread between your product and the user • Use reliable UX methodologies to research and analyze data to create an effective UX strategy • Bring your UX strategy to life with wireframes and prototypes • Set measurable metrics and conduct user tests to improve digital products • Incorporate the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to create accessible digital products In Detail If you want to create web apps that are not only beautiful to look at, but also easy to use and fully accessible to everyone, including people with special needs, this book will provide you with the basic building blocks to achieve just that. The book starts with the basics of UX, the relationship between Human-Centered Design (HCD), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and the User-Centered Design (UCD) Process; it gradually takes you through the best practices to create a web app that stands out from your competitors. You'll also learn how to create an emotional connection with the user to increase user interaction and client retention by different means of communication channels. We'll guide you through the steps in developing an effective UX strategy through user research and persona creation and how to bring that UX strategy to life with beautiful, yet functional designs that cater for complex features with micro interactions. Practical UX methodologies such as creating a solid Information Architecture (IA), wireframes, and prototypes will be discussed in detail. We'll also show you how to test your designs with representative users, and ensure that they are usable on different devices, browsers and assistive technologies. Lastly, we'll focus on making your web app fully accessible from a development and design perspective by taking you through the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Style and Approach This is an easy-to-understand step-by-step guide with full of examples to that will help you in creating good UX for your web applications.
UX for XR: User Experience Design and Strategies for Immersive Technologies (Design Thinking)
by Cornel HillmannExtending traditional digital platforms to the new frontier of extended reality (XR) requires taking into account what best practices, new concepts, and conventions have been established and what learnings can be brought forward from case studies involving industry leaders. By looking at practical examples from the field of handheld AR breakthroughs, virtual reality (VR) success stories and experimental interaction concept of pioneering XR platforms, you'll see how it's possible to map out a framework of user experience (UX) guidelines to close in on opportunities and challenges that lay ahead.This book defines, identifies, and analyzes UX practices for XR environments and reviews the techniques and tools for prototyping and designing XR user interactions. You'll approach the design for experiential state and spatial cognition, using established UX key performance indicators, while taking into account the social dynamics, emotional framework and wider industry context.UX design and strategy for the XR space is a new frontier, so UX for XR focuses on case studies and industry research to illustrate the relationship between UX design and the growth of immersive technologies. Practical examples will demonstrate how you should apply UX design principles using designing interactions in XR by identifying the importance of spaces, senses and storyboarding.What You'll LearnExplore the challenges and opportunities of designing for XRSee how spatial interaction is revolutionizing human computer interactionExamine sensory input and interaction beyond the screenWork with 3D Interaction Design and build a strong 3D UXUnderstand VR and augmented reality essentials for emotion-rich user experiencesApply UX research techniques for the XR spaceWho This Book Is ForThis book is primarily for UX designers, consultants, and strategists; XR developers; and media professionals
UX Fundamentals for Non-UX Professionals: User Experience Principles for Managers, Writers, Designers, and Developers
by Edward StullDemystify UX and its rules, contradictions, and dilemmas. This book provides real-world examples of user experience concepts that empower teams to create compelling products and services, manage social media, interview UX candidates, and oversee product teams.From product decisions to performance reviews, your ability to participate in discussions about UX has become vital to your company's success as well as your own. However, UX concepts can seem complex. Many UX books are written by and for UX professionals. UX Fundamentals for Non-UX Professionals serves the needs of project managers, graphic designers, copyeditors, marketers, and others who wish to understand UX design and research.You will discover how UX has influenced history and continues to affect our daily lives. Entertaining real-world examples demonstrate what a massive, WWII-era tank teaches us about design, what a blue flower tells us about audiences, and what drunk marathoners show us about software.What You'll LearnKnow the fundamentals of UX through real-world examples Acquire the skills to participate intelligently in discussions about UX design and researchUnderstand how UX impacts business, including product, pricing, placement, and promotion as well as security, speed, and privacyWho This Book Is ForProfessionals who work alongside UX designers and researchers, including but not limited to: project managers, graphic designers, copyeditors, developers, and human resource professionals; and business, marketing, and computer science students seeking to understand how UX affects human cognition and memory, product pricing and promotion, and software security and privacy.
UX Research: Practical Techniques for Designing Better Products
by Brad Nunnally David FarkasOne key responsibility of product designers and UX practitioners is to conduct formal and informal research to clarify design decisions and business needs. But there's often mystery around product research, with the feeling that you need to be a research Zen master to gather anything useful. Fact is, anyone can conduct product research. With this quick reference guide, you'll learn a common language and set of tools to help you carry out research in an informed and productive manner.This book contains four sections, including a brief introduction to UX research, planning and preparation, facilitating research, and analysis and reporting. Each chapter includes a short exercise so you can quickly apply what you've learned.Learn what it takes to ask good research questionsKnow when to use quantitative and qualitative research methodsExplore the logistics and details of coordinating a research sessionUse softer skills to make research seem natural to participantsLearn tools and approaches to uncover meaning in your raw dataCommunicate your findings with a framework and structure
UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want
by Jaime LevyUser experience (UX) strategy requires a careful blend of business strategy and UX design, but until now, there hasn't been an easy-to-apply framework for executing it. This hands-on guide introduces lightweight strategy tools and techniques to help you and your team craft innovative multi-device products that people like to use.Whether you're an entrepreneur, UX/UI designer, product manager, or part of an intrapreneurial team, this book teaches simple-to-advanced strategies that you can use in your work right away. Along with business cases, historical context, and real-world examples throughout, you'll also gain different perspectives on the subject through interviews with top strategists.Define and validate your target users through provisional personas and customer discovery techniquesConduct competitive research and analysis to explore a crowded marketplace or an opportunity to create unique valueFocus your team on the primary utility and business model of your product by running structured experiments using prototypesDevise UX funnels that increase customer engagement by mapping desired user actions to meaningful metrics
UX Strategy: How To Devise Innovative Digital Products That People Want
by Jaime LevyUser experience (UX) strategy lies at the intersection of UX design and business strategy, but until now, there hasn't been an easy-to-apply framework for executing it. This hands-on guide introduces lightweight product strategy tools and techniques to help you and your team devise innovative digital solutions that people want.Author Jaime Levy shows UX/UI designers, product managers, entrepreneurs, and aspiring strategists simple to advanced methods that can be applied right away. You'll gain valuable perspective through business cases and historical context. This second edition includes new real-world examples, updated techniques, and a chapter on conducting qualitative online user research.Define value propositions and validate target users through provisional personas and customer discovery techniquesExplore marketplace opportunities by conducting competitive research and analysisDesign experiments using rapid prototypes that are focused on the business modelConduct online user research to gain valuable insights quickly on any budgetTest business ideas and validate marketing channels by running online advertising and landing page campaigns
UX Style Frameworks: Creating Collaborative Standards
by Marti GoldUX Style Frameworks is a practical guide for the hands-on creation of a Style Framework. This new and collaborative documentation format combines different departments’ standards and style guides into a single, unified, and accessible source for all employees. Marti Gold defines Style Frameworks for web and user experience designers, showing what and how much information goes into a style framework. As UX designers and creative directors are charged with ensuring a business’s web and mobile output are in line with branding standards, the unification of style guides, code libraries, and pattern libraries is an important aspect to dissolving "design siloes" and creating a unified brand. Each section in the book will identify the current pain points and common internal practices that result in standards documents being ignored and eventually becoming obsolete. UX Style Frameworks provides solutions on creating Style Frameworks that evolve to keep standards current, ultimately resulting in more cohesive brand and product designs. Key features: Offers a fully functional companion website with a complete Style Framework, showing all examples featured in the book and available for download so that users can start their own Style Framework. Each section includes information about addressing company politics and policies to help readers navigate those murky waters to ensure buy-in and establishment of Style Frameworks. Includes case studies that showcase success stories where Style Frameworks were implemented and not-so-successful stories where Style Frameworks were needed, giving readers examples of different ways Style Frameworks can be incorporated into existing workflows.
UX/UI Bibliography
by Safari Content TeamUser Experience (UX) humanizes usability, looking past the efficiency of tasks by examining feelings, emotions, motivations and values. This bibliography is your user experience roadmap. We have curated the most prolific books on the subject and organized them chronologically, based upon how most UX projects unfold. You will start by learning the fundamentals of user experience. You will then learn about gathering business objectives, researching the user, understanding the user, organizing information, designing interfaces and interactions, using common reusable UX patterns, building prototypes, developing a content strategy, optimizing for mobile and search, performing usability tests, analyzing data and finally what it's like to work in the UX field.
V-Learning
by Leonard A. Annetta Elizabeth Folta Marta KlesathEqually grounded in the research and the practical applications developed by the authors over a number of years, this book shows how virtual learning environments could represent the future of higher education. As academics begin to use environments such as Second Life to reach a broader student audience, this volume offers the distance-learning community (administrators, faculty, and students) a different, yet successful, approach to delivering content over the Internet through 3D virtual learning environments that have the potential to transform higher education. Covering a broad spectrum of frameworks, from commercial multiplayer video games to online learning, the book shows just how powerful these environments can be in the arena of education, and concludes that data-driven practice will ensure almost universal take-up, even among those currently unwilling to use V-learning. The authors provide numerous practical examples of distance learning in its current state of development, as well as making informed predictions about how future environments might evolve. This much-needed book is right at the cutting edge of its subject, and comes at a time when research in both educational gaming and distance learning are converging.
V-Ray 5 for 3ds Max: Day & Night Interior Workflows for Parametric Designs, Volume 2 (3D Photorealistic Rendering)
by Jamie CardosoRevitalize your architectural visualizations by bringing new levels of realism to your day and night interior scenes. This book features full-color, step-by-step tutorials to develop a firm understanding of the processes and techniques involved in creating jaw-dropping 3d visualizations for top marketing agencies. This second volume includes day and night lighting of an atrium scene using seasoned tools and techniques to deploy V-Ray 5 and 3ds Max 2020. It has never been quicker and easier to create the industry’s top-of-the-range 3d marketing visuals. The book starts with an overview of the best techniques to approach clients via emails, calls, meetings, and social media. There are also key insights into the best practices of handling projects, pricing, contracts, invoices, pre-production, production, post-production, etc. The subsequent step takes users through the installation of V-Ray 5 and the process of accessing the V-Ray Material browser dialog. Throughout the book, users are taken through VRayMtl functions such as Diffuse, Roughness, Reflect, Glossiness, Metalness, Refract, IOR, Abbe number, Fog color, Translucency, BRDF, Coat, Sheen and Bump. Users will also learn how to use procedural maps such as VRayBitmap, VRayTriplanarTex, Bricks, Metals, Carpaint, VRayDisplacementMod, VRayUVWRandomizer, VRayMultiSubTex, VRayPointCloudColor, VRayDirt, VRayAerialPersepective, VRayLightMtl, VRayMtlWrapper, VRayOverrideMtl, VRay2SidedMtl, VRayBlendMtl and VRayEdgesTex. Users will have a rare insight into all functionalities of a V-Ray camera, VRayLight objects, Render settings, Frame buffer, Global switches, IPR options, Bucket and Progressive image samplers, Image filters, Global DMC, Color mapping, Brute force GI, Light cache, Color management, Distributed rendering, Render elements, V-Ray image file format, VFB History settings, VFB Lens Effects, LightMix, Film tonemap, Hue/Saturation, Lookup Table and much more. Finally, users will embark on the amazing journey of utilizing the previous chapters to create eye-catching 3d marketing visuals through the meticulous process of pre-production, production and post-production of both day and night scenes/lighting. The tips and tricks section will extensively cover key sections about Verified views for planning applications, Parametric modeling with AdvArray, anima®, project manager plug-in, Verge3d, Webrotate 360, Accucities 3d city models and much more.
V-Ray 5 for 3ds Max 2020: 3D Rendering Workflows Volume 1 (3D Photorealistic Rendering)
by Jamie CardosoIncrease the photorealism of your 3d visualizations with enhanced toolsets of V-Ray 5 for 3ds Max 2020. The book is filled with colorful illustrations depicting step-by-step tutorials about the process of creating a photorealistic day-and-night exterior scene. Each tutorial includes a 3d project scene to guide users through the production and the post-production processes. The book begins with an overview of the best techniques to approach clients via emails, calls, meetings, and via social media. There are also key insights into the best practices of handling projects, pricing, contracts, invoices, the pre-production, production, and the post-production, to name but a few. Throughout the book, users are taken through VRayMtl functions such as Diffuse, Roughness, Reflect, Glossiness, Metalness, Refract, Index of Refraction (IOR), Abbe number, Fog color, Translucency, BRDF, Coat, Sheen, and Bump. Also, users will learn how to use procedural maps such as VRayBitmap, VRayTriplanarTex, Bricks, Metals, Carpaint, VRayDisplacementMod, VRayUVWRandomizer, VRayMultiSubTex, VRayPointCloudColor, VRayDirt, VRayAerialPersepective, VRayLightMtl, VRayMtlWrapper, VRayOverrideMtl, VRay2SidedMtl, VRayBlendMtl, and VRayEdgesTex. In addition, there are tips and tricks accompanied with videos highlighting how to create VR interactive apps using Verge 3d; how to create verified views; and how to use plug-ins and scripts such as Project Manager, Auto grid pivot point, GarageFarm, Zmapping, gobotree, and VIShopper. Finally, users will have a rare insight into all functionalities of a VRay camera, VRayLight objects, Render settings, Frame buffer, Global switches, IPR options, Bucket and Progressive image samplers, Image filters, Global DMC, Color mapping, Brute force global illumination, Light cache, Color management, Distributed rendering, Render elements, VRay image file format, VFB History settings, VFB Lens Effects, LightMix, Film tonemap, Hue/Saturation, Lookup Table, and much more. Key Features This book deals with real projects/3d scenes and delivers up-to-date V-Ray 5 functionalities and production workflows using 3ds Max 2020 This book has professional supporting files ready to open and explore This book details the meticulous step-by-step processes of creating jaw-dropping 3d renderings This book includes unrivaled in-depth coverage of V-Ray 5 for 3ds Max 2020 This book includes 3d rendering methodologies currently used by key industry players Author Jamie Cardoso is a renowned author, reviewer, computer artist, and technologist, with years of experience in creating state-of-the-art 3d photomontages, verified views, VR, AR, XR, MR, Stereos, and photorealistic interior and exterior visualizations for architects and designers.
V-Ray My Way: A Practical Designer's Guide to Creating Realistic Imagery Using V-Ray & 3ds Max
by Lee WyldeV-Ray My Way: A Practical Designers Guide to Creating Realistic Imagery Using V-Ray & 3ds Max is a practical, hands-on guide to creating some of the most stunning computer-generated images possible. It caters to the design masses; architects, engineers, interior designers, industrial designers, photographers, and enthusiasts will find this book essential in their quest to express themselves through visual communication. V-Ray My Way is an accumulation of 13 years of experimental experience and will have you creating content within minutes, help grow your company, help develop your portfolio, and help you make that career leap. Additional resources and exercises are available at the book’s companion website, http://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/_author/wylde-9780415709637/ .
Vaadin 7 Cookbook
by Ondrej Kvasnovsky Jaroslav HolanThis is a cookbook with easy-to-follow recipes containing practical and detailed examples which are all fully backed up with code, illustrations, and tips."Vaadin 7 Cookbook" is for developers who want to create Rich Internet Applications with Vaadin.Both newcomers to Vaadin and those who have some experience with it will find recipes to expand their working knowledge of Vaadin.
Vaadin 7 UI Design By Example: Beginner’s Guide
by Alejandro DuarteThis book is a hands-on Beginner's Guide for developers who are new to Vaadin and/or Vaadin UI components. The book will teach readers through examples to use each of the exciting components to build and add various aspects of the user interface to their web apps.If you have experience with the Java language and want to create web applications that look good without having to deal with HTML, XML, and JavaScript, this book is for you. Basic Java programming skills are required, but no web development knowledge is needed at all.
Václav Trojan: Music Composition in Czech Animated Films
by Marco BellanoThis book explores the Czech composer Václav Trojan (1907-1983) and his compositions for Jiri Trnka's films, a very influential puppet stop-motion animator. Trnka is regarded as one of the finest outcomes of Czech art in the aftermath of the Second World War and inspiration for contemporary directors like Tim Burton and companies such as Aardman or Laika. Trojan's music for animation sets a great artistic model in European animation, at least as meaningful as Carl Stalling's music for Warner Bros. cartoons in the USA. Trojan was an eclectic artist, which encompassed folk songs, jazz and blues influences, neoclassical symphonic and chamber works, opera and more. Key Features: A historical overview of the origins and early development of Czech animation Biographical sketches and stylistic outline of both Trnka and Trojan An audiovisual analysis of all the available Trnka films Trojan wrote music for Filmography and bibliography
Vagrant: Up and Running
by Mitchell HashimotoHow does Vagrant boost the productivity of companies such as Mozilla, RackSpace, LivingSocial, and others? This comprehensive guide shows you how to create and distribute virtualized development environments with this powerful open source tool. While Virtual machines (VMs) are portable and easy to run, due to their isolation from outside interference, many developers and system administrators have shied away from VMs because of the pain of setup and maintenance. With this book, you'll learn how to gain the benefits of VMs without the hassle, using Vagrant to create a virtual machine that matches your production systems. Learn about Vagrant's general use, and the concepts behind the tool Get a practical, project-oriented approach that takes you from basic to advanced Vagrant use in a simple LAMP web application example Explore case studies from various organizations that use Vagrant Learn about common errors and get troubleshooting tips
Vagrant Virtual Development Environment Cookbook
by Chad ThompsonIf you are a software developer or administrator who wishes to create simple, reusable environments using Vagrant, this book is the perfect choice for you. Whether you are a system administrator with extensive experience in virtualization or a developer wishing to create development scripts for cloud deployment, you will find easy-to-follow recipes and techniques in this book that will allow you to create robust and reproducible virtual environments.
Validated Numerics: A Short Introduction to Rigorous Computations
by Warwick TuckerA comprehensive, self-contained primer on validated numericsThis textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of validated numerics, an emerging new field that combines the strengths of scientific computing and pure mathematics. In numerous fields ranging from pharmaceutics and engineering to weather prediction and robotics, fast and precise computations are essential. Based on the theory of set-valued analysis, a new suite of numerical methods is developed, producing efficient and reliable solvers for numerous problems in nonlinear analysis. Validated numerics yields rigorous computations that can find all possible solutions to a problem while taking into account all possible sources of error—fast, and with guaranteed accuracy.Validated Numerics offers a self-contained primer on the subject, guiding readers from the basics to more advanced concepts and techniques. This book is an essential resource for those entering this fast-developing field, and it is also the ideal textbook for graduate students and advanced undergraduates needing an accessible introduction to the subject. Validated Numerics features many examples, exercises, and computer labs using MATLAB/C++, as well as detailed appendixes and an extensive bibliography for further reading.Provides a comprehensive, self-contained introduction to validated numericsRequires no advanced mathematics or programming skillsFeatures many examples, exercises, and computer labsIncludes code snippets that illustrate implementationSuitable as a textbook for graduate students and advanced undergraduates
Validating Product Ideas
by Tomer SharonWant to know what your users are thinking? If you're a product manager or developer, this book will help you learn the techniques for finding the answers to your most burning questions about your customers. With step-by-step guidance, Validating Product Ideas shows you how to tackle the research to build the best possible product.
Validating Technological Innovation
by David Coniam Peter FalveyThis book discusses Hong Kong's use of onscreen marking (OSM) in public examinations. Given that Hong Kong leads the way in OSM innovation, this book has arisen from a recognised need to provide a comprehensive, coherent account of the findings of various separate but linked validation studies of onscreen public examinations in Hong Kong. The authors discuss their experience of the validation process, demonstrating how high-stakes innovation should be fully validated by a series of research studies in order to satisfy key stakeholders.
Validation of Evolving Software
by Hana Chockler Daniel Kroening Leonardo Mariani Natasha SharyginaThis book describes the methodology and accompanying technology for reducing the costs of validation of changes by introducing automatic techniques to analyze and test software increments. It builds a unified approach to efficient and reliable validation of changes and upgrades, and may be used as a research monograph and a reference book.
Validity, Reliability, and Significance: Empirical Methods for NLP and Data Science (Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies)
by Stefan Riezler Michael HagmannThis book introduces empirical methods for machine learning with a special focus on applications in natural language processing (NLP) and data science. The authors present problems of validity, reliability, and significance and provide common solutions based on statistical methodology to solve them. The book focuses on model-based empirical methods where data annotations and model predictions are treated as training data for interpretable probabilistic models from the well-understood families of generalized additive models (GAMs) and linear mixed effects models (LMEMs). Based on the interpretable parameters of the trained GAMs or LMEMs, the book presents model-based statistical tests such as a validity test that allows for the detection of circular features that circumvent learning. Furthermore, the book discusses a reliability coefficient using variance decomposition based on random effect parameters of LMEMs. Lastly, a significance test based on the likelihood ratios of nested LMEMs trained on the performance scores of two machine learning models is shown to naturally allow the inclusion of variations in meta-parameter settings into hypothesis testing, and further facilitates a refined system comparison conditional on properties of input data. The book is self-contained with an appendix on the mathematical background of generalized additive models and linear mixed effects models as well as an accompanying webpage with the related R and Python code to replicate the presented experiments. The second edition also features a new hands-on chapter that illustrates how to use the included tools in practical applications.
Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
by Adam Fisher"This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." -- Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and Nurtureshock A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley -- from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way.Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly--and as aggressively--as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation. So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius...Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, VALLEY OF GENIUS takes readers from the dawn of the personal computer and the internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. It interweaves accounts of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. Read it to discover the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.
Valley of the Gods: A Silicon Valley Story
by Alexandra WolfeIn a riveting, hilarious account, reporter Alexandra Wolfe exposes a world that is not flat but bubbling—the men and women of Silicon Valley, whose hubris and ambition are changing the world.Each year, young people from around the world go to Silicon Valley to hatch an idea, start a company, strike it rich, and become powerful and famous. In The Valley of the Gods, Wolfe follows three of these upstarts who have “stopped out” of college and real life to live and work in Silicon Valley in the hopes of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. No one has yet documented the battle for the brightest kids, kids whose goals are no less than making billions of dollars—and the fight they wage in turn to make it there. They embody an American cultural transformation: A move away from the East Coast hierarchy of Ivy Leagues and country clubs toward the startup life and a new social order. Meet the billionaires who go to training clubs for thirty-minute “body slams” designed to fit in with the start-up schedule; attend parties where people devour peanut butter-and-jelly sushi rolls; and date and seduce in a romantic culture in which thick glasses, baggy jeans, and a t-shirt is the costume of any sex symbol (and where a jacket and tie symbolize mediocrity). Through Wolfe’s eyes, we discover how they date and marry, how they dress and live, how they plot and dream, and how they have created a business world and an economic order that has made us all devotees of them. A blistering, brilliant, and hysterical examination of this new ruling class, The Valley of the Gods presents tomorrow’s strange new normal where the only outward signs of tech success are laptops and ideas.