The Essential Guide to User Interface Design

Rating:
Summary: A Worthwhile New Edition
Review: I'd owned the first edition, and this new edition has been thoroughly updated to cover Web design. I'd highly recommend this, especially for developers who are starting out to create their first user interface--though I've got to say, even I learned a lot from the detailed, real-world examples the author provides. Well worth the price of entry!

Rating:
Summary: Thick but absolutely vacuous, platitudinous book
Review: One of those books, you know: if you can, you don't need it, if you can't it won't help you; reminiscent of the MS UI guide -- a collection of self-evident banalities treated upon with the maxumum possible verbiage in a brutishly earnest style. Absolutely pointless waste of dead trees... the reviews below surprise me.

At any rate: if curious, do not buy sight unseen -- thumb through it in a bookstore first.

Rating:
Summary: Required for anyone who is serious about interface design
Review: The field of interface and interaction design is formally known as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It is significant that a large amount of HCI deals with non-programming issues such as psychological approaches to end-user experience, social manners of the audience, and more. The Essential Guide to User Interface Design provide a comprehensive overview of the essentials of interface design.

The Essential Guide to User Interface Design focuses on the actual design of the GUI. While Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction explains why a user may react a specific way to a GUI, The Essential Guide to User Interface Design details the principles and techniques effective for GUI design. Although the book does focus on end-user interaction with systems, the bulk of the book focuses on the actual interface design and layout.

The book provides numerous examples of how small changes can affect end-user productivity, including how the selection of the appropriate component can be used to make a more efficient application. From a business perspective, Chapter 1 shows how one company saved a fortune in operational costs by simply redesigning one window in their application. While ROI is generally not a case for better GUI design, it is a compelling byproduct, nonetheless.

The book is divided into two parts. The first two chapters make up Part 1 and provide an overview of the importance of the user interface. The basics of HCI and GUIs are also detailed in this section.

Part 2 constitutes the bulk of the book (Chapters 3 through 16). In Part 2, the author describes 14 steps involved with the user interface design process. Steps 1 and 2 involve understanding who the end user is and the business function. Steps 3 - 14 go into the nitty gritty of interface design and address menus, windows, control selections, text and messages, and more. The Essential Guide to User Interface Design also provides screen shots that illustrate how to properly design effective user interfaces.

Rating:
Summary: This book should have been under 200 pages ..
Review: There is useful information in this book but it
could have been said in about 1/10 of the space.
Concept are repeated ad nauseum. And author uses
ancient GUI styles for examples instead of current
ones. Extremely painful to read.

Rating:
Summary: Best Intro Around
Review: This book is terrific--the most comprehensive treatment I've found on user interface design. I teach a course at a community college on user interface and Web design, and this provides a really clear and complete introduction. I will defintely be using it next semester.