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Designing the Obvious belongs in the toolbox of every person charged with the design and development of Web-based software, from the CEO to the programming team. Designing the Obvious explores the character traits of great Web applications and uses them as guiding principles of application design so the end result of every project instills customer satisfaction and loyalty. These principles include building only whats necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity. Designing the Obvious does not offer a one-size-fits-all development process--in fact, it lets you use whatever process you like. Instead, it offers practical advice about how to achieve the qualities of great Web-based applications and consistently and successfully reproduce them.
This latest edition updates examples to show the guiding principles of application design in action on today's web, plus adds new chapters on strategy and persuasion. It offers practical advice about how to achieve the qualities of great Web-based applications and consistently and successfully reproduce them.
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Robert Hoekman, Jr, is a passionate and outspoken user experience specialist and a prolific writer who has written dozens of articles and has worked with Seth Godin (Squidoo), Adobe, Automattic, United Airlines, DoTheRightThing.com, and countless others.
He also gives in-house training sessions and has spoken at industry events all over the world, including An Event Apart, Web App Summit, SXSW, Future of Web Design, and many others.
Robert is the author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious and its follow-up, Designing the Moment. His newest book, Web Anatomy, was coauthored by Jared Spool.
Learn more about Robert at rhjr.net. He is "rhjr" on Twitter.
This book is about strategy and design for web applications. It describes common principles and process flows in user experience design.
It is mostly targeted at managers and developers that wish to have a greater sensibility for interface design and user experience as requirements for a product success.
An interface designer should look for a text book, because here she will find only an overview. However, many insights can be found here, and one of its strengths is the interface surgery found throughout the book.
Here are some of the ideas developed in the text: focus on just a few goals and practice task oriented design, keep the mental model simple, provide contextual help and good defaults to turn user into power users, refine as much as possible and provide user feedback to improve and extend the life-time of your app.
That said, I think the text mixes up overall product strategy with interface surgery, that is, the book is too much packed and with a loose structure. Also, the images are not as rich as the text demands.
Having read a LOT of design books, I can say that this is the one I enjoyed most. Though it's only a small book, it contains as much information as many of the lengthy tomes more commonly recommended. It is written in a friendly, easy to understand style. Perfect for beginners, useful for practitioners.
I bought this book a bit by mistake. I usually don't design applications so I was a bit unwilling to start reading. But boy was I mistaken. This book changed the way I look at design, any design. The main takeaway is to not clutter the interface and just get the basics right. How many features do you use in Word? Exactly. It is very well written, to the point and gives you a few procedures to cut the fat out of the design. I would even compare it to Steve Krug's books. Once you read them, you go slap your forehead and say: "That is obvious, why didn't I think of that."
