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	• Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design Jenifer Tidwell O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2005 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 45 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Interfaces need Design

I've always been analytical about user interfaces, and human interfaces in general. Donald Norman's book "The Design of Everyday Things" is an excellent read for how the things we operate with on a daily basis have unintuitive ways of operation.

This book, "Designing Interfaces", shows the pitfalls of navigation and user interaction on the computer environment. One of the major computer magazines (I believe it was PC World) used to have a regular section on renovating a user interface to make it more understandable. This book seems to be the logical follow-up to the ideas there.

One caveat: the printing process used for this book was shoddy, with color diagrams printed with offsets that make them look blurry on the page. The content is valuable, but the way it's illustrated in the book sometimes makes it difficult to understand because of this.

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Please read this if you program user interfaces

It is hard to write a review on a book that has a title that explains the subject well and the book does an excellent job with the subject without straying off course. That is the problem with this one. The book is entirely on the subject of software interfaces for the user. As such it addresses some of the most frustrating problems a user faces - poor design, unclear layout, lack of intuitiveness, and sometimes just a bother to use. The author examines various interfaces and by clearly examining the purpose of the software shows when and how to display information in an understandable and user-friendly format. Areas discussed include when to use lists, tables, graphs, drilldowns, alternative views, using wizards, entry points, navigation models, sequences, breadcrumbs, page layout, using panels, undo, informational graphics, user forms and controls, and aesthetics. As a user frustrated with many software packages and poorly designed interfaces, Designing Interfaces should be read by everyone working with trying to create a user-friendly product.

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WEB DESIGN IS DIFFERENT FROM BOOK DESIGN

Jenifer Tidwell's book is excellent, both for its organization and information content. It is indeed unfortunate that the book's designers had so little experience designing books.
From a design viewpoint, their visual structure is well done. However, the choice of an expanded sans serif type, coupled with a 6.5 inch line length makes for poor, difficult readability. The readability standard for line length is 1 1/2 to 2 lengths of the chosen alphabet. In addition, although the book's paper has a matt gloss finish, it is still reflective under a reading lamp, adding to the lack of ease in reading.

I find it interesting that a book that dwells so well on aspects of the various patterns that can be used for good web sites ranks so poorly in the text that describes it. As far back as the 1950's, people like Miles Tinker researched and wrote extensively on what today might be called "patterns for print readability." To find it so ignored in this otherwise excellent text makes me rank it far lower on the scale than it otherwise deserves.

Other books that O'Reilly has published such as Information Architecture for the World Wide Web use an easy to read serif type, and a paper stock that is non-relective under a desk lamp. For a less flashy design, but one that is much more reader-friendly regarding ease of reading the content, look at The Design of Sites, published by Addison Wesley.

Print is still around, and although it is not as compelling an area for new book design as the Web is, good readable design for print still matters.

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Tips on everything from navigation and forms to using graphic editors and structuring for actions

Jenifer Tidwell's Designing Interfaces: Patterns For Effective Interaction Design tells how to design a range of interactive software applications for the web and other services, showing software engineers how to understand the patterns common to design solutions. Here are tips on everything from navigation and forms to using graphic editors and structuring for actions. Color screen shots, graphs and tables pack pages which demonstrate the how, when and why of interface design.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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