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From the Back Cover
This paperback version of Brenda Laurel's 1991 hardcover classic features a new chapter that takes the reader through virtual reality and beyond to a new level of human computer interaction that is genuinely transforming. Like its predecessor, this book presents a new theory of human-computer activity.
0201550601B04062001
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Customer Reviews
It is a new "Way" of thinking, and, indeed, is so far ahead of any way we design software now that many ideas that this book suggests still need extensive research to even understand how to implement. (e.g. Freytag graphs as a way of structuring software/task flow to provide a pleasing HCI, and Brenda's Principles of Intelligent Computer Agency as a means for implementing truly AI agents with personality and emotions).
Along with the wonderful head rush of compelling new theory, she also takes the second half of the book to explain principles of software design that you can implement in your programs _now_, and also takes the time to introduce you to fascinating HCI research offshoots like Programming by Demonstration.
It is wonderful writing, and her ideas and concepts continually refresh and remind me why I am in such an exciting field.
It is also one of those books which does not do a good job of unifying its material, in my opinion. Rather than being a progression of ideas that builds to some intellectual climax, it meanders through various interesting points not quite aimlessly. The book introduces two useful diagrams: 'flying wedges' which describe how the space of possibilities in a drama go from the 'possible' to converge on the 'necessary', and 'freytag triangles', which measures the rise and fall of a plot. If these are used to describe this book (a slight abuse?), it doesn't fare well. The freytag diagram never peaks, and the wedge doesn't converge to the 'necessary'. This may be because the objectives for the book were not clear. As a reader, I didn't realize she was not (mostly) speaking to the modern commercial software world for quite a while into the book. The book also ended with two chapters about virtual reality (the substance, not the hype), and I was left wondering if perhaps *this* was what the book was really about (if so, I didn't see it coming).
All that said: there are many good ideas in the book, some of which will make you stop and think for a while (e.g. those diagrams). It is valuable because of this. As an individual, I simply wish the book had been better structured, for I'd have gotten more out of it.
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