Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design
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Product Description
Product Description
In a complex world, products that are easy to use win favor with consumers. This is the first book on the topic of simplicity aimed specifically at interaction designers. It shows how to drill down and simplify user experiences when designing digital tools and applications. It begins by explaining why simplicity is attractive, explores the laws of simplicity, and presents proven strategies for achieving simplicity. Remove, hide, organize and displace become guidelines for designers, who learn simplicity by seeing before and after examples and case studies where the results speak for themselves.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Let's be clear: this is a very short book. It's not going to teach you tons of stuff about how to create a better product. It's not a textbook.
What it is: pared-down, thought-provoking, beautiful.
When I picked it up, my first thought was 'lovely' and my second was 'is that it?'. It didn't seem weighty enough to have that much of an impact.
As I read it, I realise that there's a lot more insight in it than the size implies. Giles has worked really hard to pare this down to a few simple messages that you can act on straight away.
Yes, you can read it all in a (fairly short) train or plane ride. I did that, but I found that I kept stopping to reflect on ideas in the book and how I wanted to use them, or challenge myself to use them, in various projects. I'll come back to it, both to read through and to dip in now and then when I need a little thoughtful inspiration.
Definitely recommended.
What it is: pared-down, thought-provoking, beautiful.
When I picked it up, my first thought was 'lovely' and my second was 'is that it?'. It didn't seem weighty enough to have that much of an impact.
As I read it, I realise that there's a lot more insight in it than the size implies. Giles has worked really hard to pare this down to a few simple messages that you can act on straight away.
Yes, you can read it all in a (fairly short) train or plane ride. I did that, but I found that I kept stopping to reflect on ideas in the book and how I wanted to use them, or challenge myself to use them, in various projects. I'll come back to it, both to read through and to dip in now and then when I need a little thoughtful inspiration.
Definitely recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In "Simple and Usable", the author successfully compacts what seems like 10 or 15 years' experience at the sharp end of creating digital interfaces into a series of easy-to-read, bite-size chunks. Highly relevant and motivational, the book is written in an insightful and informal style with many quotable passages and enlightening anecdotes.
Featuring lots of clearly articulated examples and case studies, the book brings together research and latest thinking from a wide range of disciplines including human computer interaction, marketing, psychology and behavioural economics.
Using as it's core 4 different strategies of simplicity - "Remove, Organise, Hide, Displace" - the book gets to the crux of many of the key challenges of organising and presenting information via digital media, most of which will be familiar both to those new to UX design and seasoned pros.
Furthermore, this book practices what it preaches; it's easy to digest, beautifully designed and illustrated, and refreshingly free of clutter, opaque theory and philosophical pondering.
Best of all, reading the book is like having an angelic conscience sitting on your shoulder telling you not *what* to do, but how to *approach* a design issue. This is it's real value and in my view it's something that's pretty unique.
All of this adds up to what I think is one of the most inspiring books on usability and user experience design written to date.
If you've read and enjoyed Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think", then you need this book to take you and your team to the next level.
Featuring lots of clearly articulated examples and case studies, the book brings together research and latest thinking from a wide range of disciplines including human computer interaction, marketing, psychology and behavioural economics.
Using as it's core 4 different strategies of simplicity - "Remove, Organise, Hide, Displace" - the book gets to the crux of many of the key challenges of organising and presenting information via digital media, most of which will be familiar both to those new to UX design and seasoned pros.
Furthermore, this book practices what it preaches; it's easy to digest, beautifully designed and illustrated, and refreshingly free of clutter, opaque theory and philosophical pondering.
Best of all, reading the book is like having an angelic conscience sitting on your shoulder telling you not *what* to do, but how to *approach* a design issue. This is it's real value and in my view it's something that's pretty unique.
All of this adds up to what I think is one of the most inspiring books on usability and user experience design written to date.
If you've read and enjoyed Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think", then you need this book to take you and your team to the next level.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is about how to design sites that are easy to use for the vast majority of your userbase. It will not teach you any CSS or Javascript tricks. It will show you why some designs don't work and what you might do instead to make them work.
Weirdly for a book of this nature, it is an ideal toilet book. Each page contains a message. Indeed, you shouldn't read the whole book in one sitting, or plane ride. Instead, read it a few pages at a time, then digest that. Repeat and learn.
And what will you learn? Well, obvious stuff really. But the best tips are always those that have been staring you in the face. Most people don't like clutter. The best way to design a site is to see how people use it. That sort of stuff.
Now, I don't necessarily agree with everything in this book. It is written purely from the perspective of the designer. A successful designer working big ticket contracts doesn't need to worry about the likes of SEO for instance. But the rest of us do. Its one thing adopting a less is more approach to the prose on your site, but if nobody can find the damn thing its irrelevent. Plus, I don't think there is anything wrong with the way Amazon lets you save items (read the book to find out what I'm going on about here).
However, there is an awful lot of stuff in this book that I do agree with, and still more stuff that I hadn't really considered. And best of all, the author's ideas are backed up with clear examples. I particularly liked the example of the Paris Underground Route Finder. Such an obvious fault to anybody who uses the thing, yet so easy to overlook if you are just designing from an idea.
Design is only part of my job. I spend more time coding and doing other web-related tasks. Normally I hate books purely on design, because, well, they are purely on design. However, this one I liked because it wasn't completely up its own posterior, and it delivered its message in an easily digestible format. If, like me, you hail from the Developer side of the coin, then this book coupled with "Don't Make Me Think" are the two design related books I would consider essential.
Weirdly for a book of this nature, it is an ideal toilet book. Each page contains a message. Indeed, you shouldn't read the whole book in one sitting, or plane ride. Instead, read it a few pages at a time, then digest that. Repeat and learn.
And what will you learn? Well, obvious stuff really. But the best tips are always those that have been staring you in the face. Most people don't like clutter. The best way to design a site is to see how people use it. That sort of stuff.
Now, I don't necessarily agree with everything in this book. It is written purely from the perspective of the designer. A successful designer working big ticket contracts doesn't need to worry about the likes of SEO for instance. But the rest of us do. Its one thing adopting a less is more approach to the prose on your site, but if nobody can find the damn thing its irrelevent. Plus, I don't think there is anything wrong with the way Amazon lets you save items (read the book to find out what I'm going on about here).
However, there is an awful lot of stuff in this book that I do agree with, and still more stuff that I hadn't really considered. And best of all, the author's ideas are backed up with clear examples. I particularly liked the example of the Paris Underground Route Finder. Such an obvious fault to anybody who uses the thing, yet so easy to overlook if you are just designing from an idea.
Design is only part of my job. I spend more time coding and doing other web-related tasks. Normally I hate books purely on design, because, well, they are purely on design. However, this one I liked because it wasn't completely up its own posterior, and it delivered its message in an easily digestible format. If, like me, you hail from the Developer side of the coin, then this book coupled with "Don't Make Me Think" are the two design related books I would consider essential.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A book to rethink your UI concepts
This is a great book for developers, for it makes you think about a lot of things very important for users that normally we forget for our technical background. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Santi Sierra
A great reminder of lessons forgotten
If you loved the lightness of Steve Krug's "Don't make me think" or the one-pagers of "Universal Principles of Design" then you'll probably love this book too. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Lisa Halabi
A must read for understanding how to simplify the complex
This is the one of the most productive books I've ever read! Not only does the layout of each page justify the book's title but the content is quite mind blowing. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Heddi Cundle
A really good read
This book is a really good read. The part about "Setting a Vision" has changed the way I approach the beginning of interaction design projects. Try it on your clients, too. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Dave Ellender
Beautiful
As you would expect from a book that preaches simplicity and usability in design, this is a very attractive book: well laid-out, uncluttered and with no waffle. Read more
Published 18 months ago by A. Skudder
Simple and usable content on a simple and usable book
More books like these... it's good to see the "Simple and Usable" approach used on the books themselves. "Eat your own dog food", we can say. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Nelson Mendes
Have a notebook and highlighter at the ready
I read this book from cover to cover on a return flight from holiday recently. Having previously worked with Giles, I was of course expecting great things... Read more
Published 19 months ago by B. Thomas
A beautiful and simple book about reducing complexity
This book is a delight. Everything about it is Simple and Usable - the layout, the beautiful illustrations, and the text. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Drys
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