Rating: 
Summary: Methods and metaphors for creating algorithms
Review: Accessibly written by experienced game developer and lecturer Chris Crawford, The Art Of Interactive Design is a superbly presented software designer's guide to crafting more practical and functional interactive software. Individual chapters aptly focus on methods and metaphors for creating algorithms, language design, practical and innovative advice for adaptable anthropomorphization, advice for avoiding common mistakes, and a great deal more. The Art Of Interactive Design is an excellent instructional guide, an informative overview, and a "must-have" supplement for personal and professional interactive computer programming reference shelves.
Rating: 
Summary: Verbose
Review: An amusing book. Perhaps Crawford's most striking suggestion is that a project should be headed by a designer who has an arts background and who is also able to program. To him, this is an ideal, which may take the field decades to achieve.I am dubious as to how necessary this is, in the first place. He claims that it is easier to find someone from the arts and have her learn the rudiments of programming, than vice versa. But in a specialised environment, like engineering, science or education, it may be better for her to hail from that field, so that she can better know what users might want. Granted, though, for a mass market audience, a more general background might be better. When it comes to specific suggestions regarding the design of a program, he has good ideas. Like using progress bars if a task takes longer than ten seconds. Or using first or second person active voice, rather than a third person passive. These do increase the interactivity. The book is somewhat verbose. He writes at length to illustrate his points. But a little brevity may have been possible, without losing any clarity.
Rating:
Summary: A Gem of a Book
Review: Crawford is one of those intellectual gems who is often overlooked by the swirling tumult of art-star-authors and lexicon-twisting new media theorists. His work is outstanding; and this book is no exception. I originally bought this book when it was marketed as "Understanding Interactivity" - the facelift is quite nice, but the invaluable information is still, well, invaluable. This book has the unique capability of crystalizing the key elements of interactivity (from a real-world standpoint) so that first year students are able to understand the overarching concepts (I use the book in my Interactive Multimedia classes). But, like any great book, it accomodates and grows along with the experience and knowledge of the reader. There is much to gain from Crawford's lucid, intriguing and well thought out text - and I recommend it to anyone interested in exploring the creation of artwork that incorporates or addresses interactivity.
Rating:
Summary: A Gem of a Book
Review: Crawford is one of those intellectual gems who is often overlooked by the swirling tumult of art-star-authors and lexicon-twisting new media theorists. His work is outstanding; and this book is no exception. I originally bought this book when it was marketed as "Understanding Interactivity" - the facelift is quite nice, but the invaluable information is still, well, invaluable. This book has the unique capability of crystalizing the key elements of interactivity (from a real-world standpoint) so that first year students are able to understand the overarching concepts (I use the book in my Interactive Multimedia classes). But, like any great book, it accomodates and grows along with the experience and knowledge of the reader. There is much to gain from Crawford's lucid, intriguing and well thought out text - and I recommend it to anyone interested in exploring the creation of artwork that incorporates or addresses interactivity.
Rating: 
Summary: Too full of fluff
Review: If you're looking for a book with over-abstracted filler written by an author with ulterior agendas and a need to use his thesaurus and high school history books to prove his intellectual capacity, this is the book for you. If you're looking for a book that can be more readily applied to interactive design, look elsewhere. Granted, a few of the chapters provide insight into smart design principles and distilling down what is essential to pleasing the end users, but books comprised of a few chapters don't sell very well in today's market of thicker-is-better tech books. Another annoying deception is the copyright date which shows 2003, yet the book is chock full of obviously outdated references such as the lack of web users with broadband and being able to watch full-motion video on your home computer "in the near future".
Rating:
Summary: Interesting.
Review: Overall, the content is interesting.
The sad thing is : due to the lack of external references, it's very difficult to connect the knowledge corpus developped with works outside of Crawford taxonomies.
Worse, he explicitely writes that he's trying to 'educate' us on the subject. Sure, we have search engines and all, but as far as I know, nothing replaces a library and relevant pointers.
In the beginning, he states that some scholarship material will without any doubt emerge and be more .... well... Scholar-like. That's (in my point of view) a very poor excuse to rip some reference pointers. Taxonomies don't appear ex-nihilo. But again, it's a good read.
Rating:
Summary: If you like books by Alan Cooper, try this....
Review: The Art of Interactive Design was the sleeper of the year for me. I'm surprised it hasn't created more of a splash. Perhaps it's because it's published by a lesser known publisher and it doesn't fit the standard format of most usability or GUI books. It doesn't, for instance, include any code examples. It's purely about concepts and approaches. What Chris Crawford does that is so effective is to approach design issues from such an oblique angle that I found myself looking at very familiar situations with new eyes. The text bursts with the outraged language of a frustrated user. Consider his description of the old documentation issue: "I hold in special contempt those designers who dismiss users' fears with RTFM (Read The Manual); I'd love to lock them in a dark room at four in the morning with a 400-page manual explaining how to turn on the lights." That kind of robust language, and some very useful technical information from his experience as a games programmer, makes this book an easy five star recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Whole book, three words: interactivity over features
Review: This book definitely has a drum to beat, and it's around the value of interactivity over just pure featuritis. However, it goes on and on, littered with what feel like pseudo-scientific statements. It would've been nice to see a few studies of real people, research citations, or even just opinions of somebody other than the author. It felt like he was rewriting the evolution of software over time from his own frame of reference, and then extrapolating about where he thought it was going. Still, there was at least one point I agreed with; interactivity (and, in general, providing value to the user) is more important than additional hanger-on features.
Rating:
Summary: A Gold Mine of Ideas
Review: This book is a very diffcult read. Touching on a whole lot of subjects, alternating between abstract, complicated theory and abundant, confusing detail, and displaying Crawford's usual Thesaurus-o-holic writing style, it is sure to leave you scratching your head in bewilderment a couple of times.
Still, I must heartily reccomend it to anyone who is willing to make the effort. This book is very far from an intellectual "do it yourself" kit, though it does have many useful practical suggestions. It also has very little that would satisfy the criteria of academic research. What it does have, however, is an abundance of sheer, brilliant inspiration.
The pages are laden with powerful, abstract concepts that, upon reading and re-reading them, slowly seep into your mind and enrich your thinking on the subject immensely. It is for this important reason, and for this reason alone, that I consider this book priceless. Mental enrichment is a far rarer commodity than either practical know-whats or academic knowledge.
Mr. Crawford is a charming, albeit disorderly, writer (whether he's on topic or not), and this book must be his most amusing and wittiest creation. Readers who are acquinted with Mr. Crawford's other books will notice with approval that this volume contains comparatively little that can be found in his other books or on his website, although, of course, ideas as well as specific paragraphs are qouted from himself due to his iredeemably conversational writing style.
Computerized interactivity is the next great landmark in Western civilization after the invention of the printing press. With its deep understanding of the concepts underlying interactivity, this book is a must not only for those who work in interactivity design, but also for anyone interested in understanding the revolution that the world is going through.
Get this book for an extremely rewarding mental challenge!
Rating:
Summary: Too full of fluff
Review: This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to be considered a software developer or who is interested in really making software that users love. Mr. Crawford does a great job of getting right to the heart of software development and what developers SHOULD be thinking about before they start coding. While this book will primarily appeal to the technical type, sales and marketing people could also benefit quite a bit from the concepts, especially on abstraction. I did find that the author can lose the reader from time to time with the details of a concept -- because let's face it, this can be pretty boring stuff -- still even just skimming the book and pulling out the core ideas and concepts should give you a lot to think about and better ways of approaching future development projects.
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