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GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos (Interactive Technologies)
vBulletin Book Store > vBulletin books beginning with G
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GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos (Interactive Technologies) |
Author: Jeff Johnson
Published: 2007-09-14 |
List price: $49.95
Our price: $32.97
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Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: December 02nd, 2008 09:40:59 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Revalues the importance and complexity of GUI design
The introduction of programming tools such as VisualBasic probably contributed to the misperception that designing a form was something easy to achieve. Using drag and drop controls to build a form certainly is, but creating an unambiguous and task-oriented screen flow is another story.
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br /Jeff Johnson did an excellent job. The chapters arrange the "bloopers" into meaningful categories (GUI Controls, Navigation, Textual, etc) and the table of contents makes it very easy to locate a specific topic.
br /Personally, I like his approach of "Don'ts followed by Dos". Presenting an example of bad design first, forced me to try to spot where the mistakes were (not always an easy task) and this contributed, in my opinion, to a better learning experience. Another nice surprise was to learn in appendix B, the way this second edition was "usability-tested" and also, a very important although not so obvious concept, "Reviewing is not usability-testing".
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br /This book is very easy to read and understand and I would certainly recommend it to every developer (from beginner through to senior level) involved directly or indirectly with any GUI design or implementation.
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Best GUI book, evah.
Having studied Human Computer Interaction and Psychology in school and developing websites for almost 10 years I still feel like I learn something new every time I peruse this book. It's solidly based on psychological mechanisms like attention span, association, mental modeling, and some obvious real-world experience. I can honestly say that anyone who designs GUI's (web-based, app-based, well anything really that has a user interacting with a screen) should buy this book. In fact even physical interfaces could benefit from reading this book. Even the most disciplined designer needs to be reminded of the "U" in GUI...it really is all about the user.
A worthwhile and useful read
This book is aimed at both desktop application GUI developers and website developers. It shows real world examples of bad practice and for each one shows how to do things better. The book strongly advocates a user and task focused view of software. The book is interesting, and at times thought provoking. One area that the book only touches on in passing is accessibility---that's a big topic in its own right but more mention could have been made of it. This is not a book about "fonts and colors", but about user interaction: how to make it as easy and natural as possible for users to complete the tasks they want with the software.
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br /I would recommend this book to anyone doing application or website design since at the very least it will make you more conscious of your users, as well as providing many helpful ideas about how to do things in ways that work.
 Very Informational
I'm only about half way through the book, but so far i'm pretty happy with this book. I'm a UI designer, and I began to get worried that this book was aimed more at developers and programers, thus not being much use for me. As I read on i realised that it is very well rounded for all involved in the process from begining to end, and provides a very good base of information on the priciples of designing for the user. the introduction actually recommends different chapters for differnet people (UI designer, developer, etc), making it a great tool without having to read the entire book if you don't want to. It also seems to up to date as of the end of 2007.
so you thought you knew about User Iterface design?
I thought I understood ease of use on the web, until I read this book! Jeff Johnson REALLY understands UI design--there are pages and pages of pearls in this book, useful tidbits that continually had me saying "why didn't I think of that?!", and demonstrating the value of his significant experience in this area.
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br /Also, as a manager, I learned a lot about the different collaborative roles that must come together (graphics vs. developer vs UI, etc.), and how managers can sabotage their important web project by ignoring or postponing UI design until it's too late. For managers, this section of the book alone is worth the price.
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br /Highly recommended.
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