UI Design Books
Over the past few months I've been working my way through the UI design literature as part of my research work. Figured I'd post some micro-reviews of the titles I've read so far. Why? Because I feel like it.
The Humane Interface - This is the first book I read and is by far the most influential. It really got me thinking about user interfaces in ways that I'd never even considered before and drove me in the process of reading additional material. Jef Raskin is the originator of the Macintosh project at Apple. I don't agree with all the ideas he outlines in this book, but most of them make an awful lot of sense and all of them are interesting to think about. Definitely a must read.
The Inmates are Running the Asylum : Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity - This book was written by Charles Cooper who is the guy who created Visual Basic. It was a good read, but not super inspiring. It focuses a lot on his particular methodology for designing user interfaces using personas. I found the methodology pretty interesting and it seems like something that would be useful in designing application interfaces. No idea how well it really works though.
The Design of Everyday Things - Donald Norman is a psychologist and this book really doesn't have anything to do with computers, but man was it interesting. It discusses common everyday objects and the attributes of design that make them easy or hard to use. If you've ever wondered why some doors are so much harder to open then others then this book will explain why. The same principals apply to computer interface design and this is another must read book on the subject.
Things that Make Use Smart - Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine - Another Donald Norman book and again more focused on Psychology then computers. Again an excellent read though not quite as important as The Design of Everyday Things. The main take away from this is really thinking about keeping human attributes at the forefront and not letting the machine dictate how interaction occurs. An area in which almost no computer software succeeds.
Designing From Both Sides of the Screen - I didn't like this book. I think this was mainly because it's very focused on actually implementing UI designs rather then the theory of what makes a good design. It's really an extended case study of building a instant messaging app that runs on the Palm and under Windows. It sounded like it would be an interesting and valuable read, but turned out to be rather boring. I finished it, but I don't feel it really provided much value.
Don't Make me Think - This book is by Steve Krug and is considered one of the classics in web usability. It uses a lot of examples of good and bad design and was a pretty interesting read. My interest really isn't web design though, so I didn't get as much out of it as I could have.
GUI Bloopers: Don't and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers - This book is by Jeff Johnson. It goes through a ton of scenarios showing good design vs. bad design. Even though it's a very hands on kind of book rather then theory I got quite a bit out of this book. It's a good read, especially for people who are building real applications. In fact for them it should be required reading, along with The Design of Everyday Things. Maybe software wouldn't be so horrible if people read these things.
User Interface Design for Programmers - This is by Joel Spolsky, who I feel is one of the most inciteful software engineers around. His writings on Joel on Software are always worth reading. This book is quite good, if very short. I think it took me less then an hour to read. This is probably a must read simply because it provides excellent advice in a compact and easy to read format. Maybe out of all books this is the one that should be dropped in front of working programmers, simply because they can read it quickly.
Newton 2.0 User Interface Guidelines - I didn't read this entire book as the details are a bit dated, but studying anything that Apple has done in the area of UI design is never a waste of time. In particular I'm very interested in building better mobile computing interfaces, as I consider everything currently available to be utter garbage. The Newton is probably the best mobile UI that I've seen, it's a real shame that Apple killed it off before it could really reach maturity and leverage current hardware advances.
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