About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design

This book really made me think. The author has some really clever ideas which I never even considered, such as "Why do we need a Save button". As a professional software engineer I gained a lot of good ideas from this book.The book is laid out in a very nice fashion. You can almost pick up it, turn to any random page, and start reading. The chapters are small and easy to read. I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone that is interested in software interface design.

This book is by no doubt a valuable resource for any software developer, nevertheless, more liveliness, humor or variety would have made it less monotonous. Prepare yourself to spend a great deal of time to tackle through more than half a thousand pages of very dense text, which is worth reading. The previous book by Alan Cooper, "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" is much more vivid, concise and amusing. I would recommend reading "The Inmates" first to get acquainted with Goal-Directed Design and the concept of considerate software, and then proceed to "About Face 2.0" to expand the knowledge and make it actionable.This book exposes the distinction between implementation model and mental model, and brings the concept of "perpetual intermediates" as the most common category of the users. The authors show how to classify applications by posture on the web and on desktop and handheld computers, as well as on mobile phones and public kiosks.The aspects of the modern User Interface are well covered in this book: data entry and retrieval, direct manipulation and pointing devices, metaphors, idioms and affordances. Parts of the book are devoted to such interface constituencies as controls, menus, toolbars and tooltips.You will also find chapters about installation process and dialog etiquette in this book.

How to design a application from a designers perspective. Cannot say I agree with everything, but the writers are probably right.

I think this guy has a book about how the inmates are running the asylum...well this book suffers from what happens when the subject matter experts (SME) are allowed to write books. BORING!!! SME's always seem to forget to include compelling examples. Yes there are little screen shots, but IMO in order for a book to be compelling that has to do with design...it needs to show LOTS of examples of good design. The bulk of the book should be about breaking down those designs. I need to hear why a specific design is effective. Take a hint from Steve Krugs book "Don't Make me Think". That book is extremely effective without inundating the reader with jargon. Lots of examples with meaningful visual breakdowns. Afterall...isnt UI design a VISUAL communication form?

One valuable lesson on every single page. Required reading for designers, engineers, information architects and technical managers. Buy yourself a copy and another one for your boss.

The main goal of usability engineering is creating the right interface for the right audience.The target field (cf. the users) of this book are developers, every programmer should have a copy, is not?A software package, which is unfriendly, laughing and bashing to its user, such a package would be considered as a computer program with a bad design. The user would not like to use it.Now, I'm wondering why the so self-declared software design god of the modern times is bashing, laughing and unfriendly against the users of his product.Mister Alan Cooper does not have a clue how a company works and what the background of a developer is all about. He is bashing the wrong people. Bad software interfaces are not the fault of the developer but the management and the methodologies that are used in most companies.Developers are trained in schools and universities to produce code and to design the internal architecture. Few of them receive cognitive psychology courses, which is needed to create five star interfaces.The average management in a company, small or big just allows that developers do the graphical interface design, a task for which they were not prepared. The outcome is indeed bad software but don't shoot the pianist, instead turn the spotlight on the choirmaster.The content-worth of the book is average. It is heavily focusing on one aspect of creating better software interfaces: design guidelines.While these guidelines are important, it is not enough to create excellent interfaces. The risk is that a developer, after finishing reading the book will think he or she knows everything about the job and this is not his or her fault but the author.No words are spoiled by instance on User Profiles, Contextual Task Analysis and so many other aspects of user interface designing.The design guidelines itself are mostly not new, I have read them long ago in other works and with some research you find them for free on the internet. Some guidelines-laws described in the book are even examples of bad designs, which is dangerous, at least in a way.I can imagine that for an average programmer the book is still revealing, but he or she should know that other grasslands are much greener. Best case, you have a design guideline book, nothing more, nothing less.I do not know I am allowed to do this, but if you want a real step-by-step guide for creating better software you should try "The Usability Engineering Lifecycle" by Deborah. J. Mayhew, also available on Amazon.