Rating: 
Summary: Read This Book!
Review: Jef Raskin is high on my list of People Worth Listening To. When they speak at conferences, I do not miss their talks. When they write books, I buy them immediately without waiting to read the reviews.Jef's new book certainly justifies his ranking. He tackles, head-on, the question of why computers are such a hassle to use then plots a course for change. He starts with a review of the human psycology relevant to human-computer interaction, and shows how the basic facts about how humans work are routinely ignored (if they are known at all) by the people who write software for us. He then moves on to give the reader a taste for how interfaces can be quantitativly judged (an idea that is mostly foreign to the world of software development). Finally, The Humane Interface points the way to a new generation of computers and electronic devices that serve the user; quite the opposite of today's computers and devices that quickly come to dominate the user. This book provides quite a bit of food for thought. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: A great start... but it falters toward the finish
Review: When I told a friend I had bought this book, he said he liked it through chapter four--but that it went rapidly downhill from there. He was right. In those first four chapters, Raskin--the "inventor" of the Macintosh--offers what I think is a terrific introduction to the basics of interface design, cognetics and the quantification of interfaces. I lapped it up, despite Raskin's occasionally convoluted writing style. In fact, it gave me some ideas for a project I had worked on last year. I suspect I'll turn to the first four chapters for reference in the future. But Raskin goes afield, I think, in the latter half of the book. He proposes an entirely new interface for PCs--one that dispenses with file names, directory structures and applications. I'm sure we all agree that the current Windows interface is far from ideal or humane, confusing untold millions and making work more difficult than necessary. But while Raskin's heart and intellect are in the right places, I think his proposed cure is nearly as bad as the disease. I am intrigued, however, by his ZIP or "zooming" navigation approach. So--is this book worth your time (and money)? You'll have to make your own call. If you already have a background in interface design theory, The Humane Interface offers you a view of Raskin's dream for a new interface. On the other hand, if you know little about interface design, you might really enjoy the introduction Raskin offers and appreciate the stimulus his dream interface provides.
Rating:
Summary: Must-read for developers, even those with ddesigners
Review: This book provides some simple rules to apply to almost any situation in interaction design. Like Design Patterns, it's very text-editor-centric. Also like Design Patterns, though, that's incidental to the fact that it has a ton of wonderful information to provide within that example that apply much more broadly! It should be required reading for anybody whose code interacts with the user. Unfortunately, it can be a little tough to get a good idea of the tradeoff between habits that the user has already gotten and habits that would be better for the user. It's clear there's a tradeoff there, and while the book acknowledges it, it fails to provide much guidance on making designs choices about when you can actually try to 'teach the user something new'.
Rating:
Summary: Not 'New Directions' but valuable; annoying in places
Review: This book doesn't really contain "New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems" like it says on the cover. In fact, Jef's directions for designing interactive systems mostly revolve around his designs for the Canon Cat, which date from 1984-1987. Different, and a departure from what's become the norm (the WIMP, or Windows Icons Menus Pointers graphical user interface), but not new. Readers may be annoyed by Jef's continued insistence throughout the book that the Cat contained such wonderfully efficient interface ideas, but there are some solid ideas presented. Highlights of this book include Raskin's introduction and description of Locus of Attention (approximately: involuntary focus), which may be as important for designers to consider as users' conscious focus. The concept of 'monotony' in interfaces is also interesting to consider as Raskin describes it, because he asserts this is a path that allows users to form efficient automaticity and focus on tasks rather than the interface. Also, chapter 4 includes an overview of GOMS analysis that does a good job of bringing it out of the academic esoteric realm into a place where more interaction designers will consider using it for commercial projects. Raskin's heuristics for good interaction design are spread throughout the book (would have been nicer if they were all corralled into one place for reference), but Appendix B comes close to summarizing them -- it is a document from Alzofon and Raskin's 1985 SwyftCard design. Low points of the book include Raskin's annoying, overly specific notation for keystrokes that he uses throughout, the lecturing tone, the tedium of chapter five, and the goofy quantitative modality measure he proposes in chapter three.
Rating:
Summary: The best book for teaching human interface design
Review: I scoured numerous texts to support a college seminar course in human/computer interaction design. My hunches led me to select this book from among many other excellent books. In retrospect it is one of the best textbook selections I have ever made. The book covers fundamentals of simple human psychology that are both key to good design and that will stay with students for life. It provides practical techniques, design approaches, and measures that students can immediately apply in real life. And it provokes the student (and the professor) to think about programming--not just interface design--in refreshingly radical new ways. In short, this book does everything a great textbook should do, and more. I've been a programmer for 20 years, and it changed *my* view of programming.
Rating: 
Summary: Is what it says it is...
Review: At first, I was really disappointed with this book. The "thick" writing style hides the presentation of straightforward concepts in long paragraphs and dense text. Be prepared to mull through the page looking for italics. Additionally, the "God complex" attitude conveyed by Jef really should have been caught by an editor. The didactic tone is a real turn-off. And, as other reviewers have pointed out, there is little practical advice, beyond Jef's "this is what I did" anecdotes. After saying this, there are many valuable concepts presented in the book (for a list, see the table of contents). If the book goes to a second edition, an editor and a technical writer should be part of the writing team. This would make it more readable and referenceable; making it easier to recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Food for thought
Review: This is a book on software user interface design by the father of the Macintosh and the information appliance. Specifically, it is a collection of ideas on how software could be better designed to take into account human psychology and behavior. I have been using and developing software on computers for twenty years, yet I still find most software annoying and frustrating to use. I was looking for a book on user interface design that explains why computers are so frustrating, and also points to better ways of designing software that is easier for people to use. Raskin delivers on both, though some may find the book itself frustrating to use at times. Raskin calls out key ideas from each section in italics. One of the first and most important is "An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties". People cannot and should not have to remember what application is running or what commands are available, in other words what state or "mode" the software is in. The interface should minimize distractions so people can focus on the task they are trying to accomplish rather than on the software. Interfaces can accomplish this by encouraging habituation. Many of the ideas in the book, such as eliminating modes in software, and reducing the number of actions a user has to perform to accomplish a task, can be applied in current GUI (graphical user interface) systems. But many require designing completely new interfaces. Raskin proposes replacing the application-centric operating system model of today with a command-centric model where users download only the commands they need, and once on their system, commands are available at all times. This is an intriguing idea. Developers looking for quick fixes they can apply to their desktop applications or web sites will be disappointed, though. It would have been useful to have a list of the italicized key ideas in one place as a reference. Lacking that, using a highlighter to call out the key ideas is recommended, because many of them are really good. Many of the ideas are not new, but based on ideas that Raskin implemented years ago on the Macintosh and the Canon Cat. This seems to prove that they work, but doesn't necessarily prove they would scale to today's networked computers or to non-text content. In particular doing away with individual files, and having users rely solely on search or "leaping" through all the content on the disk, seems wrong. I would have liked the book to include more of a roadmap on how the developer community can implement humane interfaces. It seems unlikely that many of these ideas will be applied by Apple or Microsoft. Those companies have invested too much in the application-centric model to change. Open source seems to be the way to go, and indeed Raskin does have an open source project at humane.sourceforge.net to develop a humane environment. But it looks like more like his personal web site than a typical open source project. It's difficult to tell how active this project is or how many people, other than Raskin, are working on it. A forum where developers and users could discuss and evolve humane interface design ideas would be useful. It is unfortunate that the open source community has not moved more in the direction of humane software. After all the work of creating the kernels like Linux, the interfaces that have been built on top seem a lot like Windows. The goal should be to build interfaces that are even easier to use. But this may be too much to ask from developers who are comfortable with cryptic programming languages and command line tools. Raskin is to be credited for going beyond simply being an advocate for usability, and actually implementing it in real projects. The book has definitely given me food for thought, and has encouraged me to apply humane design principles in my job as a software designer, and in my own projects.
Rating:
Summary: Radical new ideas, sometimes applicability can't be seen
Review: + I read this book cover to cover, which is seldom, since I usually have 3 to 8 other books lurking around to make up a certain boredom factor.
+ His ideas are radical.
+ This books made me aware about the real ugliness of modes (my personal daily mode error counter got installed).
+ It made me wish for the global incremental search facility.
- His ideas are radical (get the hint?): I doubt that without investment from a major global player in the computing industry, his ideas will just not catch on with the broader public audience, and hackers will dismiss his ideas as being too, well, non-hacker-wise. (Which is of course not a problem with the book, but with our industry in general.)
+/- Sometimes the computing world he describes is too text-centered. I will always end up in discussions with my friend on how he wants to get a CAD package working with his ideas.
- Sometimes there is this "I'm the guru, you know nothing about computers at all." attitude. Anyway, you should read it, just to know that there is something else than the button-menu world in GUI design.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: The positive reviews cover the positive side of this book.
The negatives:
1) The distinction of noun-verb vs. verb-noun behavior is strange since all his examples of good design are really verb-noun-verb (navigate-select object-perform action on object).
2) His section on user customization reveals the sort of 'the designer knows best' arrogance that has traditional brought us such design failures as soviet era archetecture, not to mention untold millions of dollars of unsellable products.
3) The worst part of his writing style is that he NEVER (ok make that seldom) describes the trade-offs that real design usually involves. He slams the beginner-expert design efforts without dealing at all with the real tradeoffs necessary. Similarly, icons are dismissed without dealing with the tradeoffs that icon use involves.
4) His approach is that of the industrial engineer who measures efficiencies with time and motion studies; after reading this book I have the dstinct impression that using software he designs would be similar to standing in an assembly line all day.
5) Very limited discussion of aethetics as they apply to ergonomics. For instance, no (well, very little) discussion of color and how it relates to the human interace; no discussion on fonts and how they relate to eye strain. In general, the book has some good technical information, but writing style and lack of essential coverage of design issues make for pervasive flaws.
Rating:
Summary: Not good for practical design tips...
Review: I read this book hoping for some insight into good design. I expected a pragmatic, psychology based perspective on users and technical design. Instead, I found the equivalent of a time- motion study on user interaction with technology. That's not a bad thing. Raskin sites some interesting studies on how people are able to work with various input devices. However, I found his negative tone put me off. Everytime he sited a study, he also complained about what was wrong with it. He thinks his designs ideas are superior to many of these, but he sited few scientific studies that backed up his claims. Raskin constantly praises one of his earlier projects, the Canon Cat. If it was so wonderful, why weren't more of those ideas emulated in future designs? I'm sure there are some valid reasons, but I think his designs are not quite as wonderful as he seems to think they are. On a different note, I think some of the writing must have been done a while back. Many of the problems considered date much farther back than the year 2000 publication date. Where some of those problems still exist today, many have been solved or inproved by current software. If you're looking for a good book on the psychology of good design, I'd recommend Norman's, "The Design of Everyday Things." If you would like more practical software design tips, "Designing From Both Sides of the Screen" is pretty good...especially the first half, which has lots of fun examples.
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