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About Face: Essentials of Window Interface Design (Paperback)

by Alan Cooper (Foreword) "This book has a simple premise: If achieving the user's goals is the basis of our user interface design, then the user will be satisfied..." (more)
3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 580 pages
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (11 Aug 1995)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1568843224
  • ISBN-13: 978-1568843223
  • Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 19 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 754,678 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  • See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

Product Description
The cleverest code in the world is worth nothing if a program′s interface proves an unwieldy barrier to users. That′s why programmers and designers alike will benefit from About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. Here, respected software designer Alan Cooper shares his own real–world experience and design principles so that you, too, can fashion intuitive, effective user interfaces. Applicable to multimedia and Web sites as well as application software, About Face is an invaluable resource for design professionals.

From the Back Cover
About Face The Essentials of User Interface Design Cooper Interaction Design Dear Reader, This book has a simple premise: if achieving the user's goals is the basis of our user interface design, then the user will be satisfied and happy. If the user is happy, he will gladly pay us money, and then we will be successful. To those who are intrigued by the technology — which includes most of us programmer types — we share a strong tendency to think in terms of functions and features. This is only natural, since this is how we build software: function by function. The problem is that this isn't how users want to use software. Developers are frequently frustrated by this, because it requires us to think in an unfamiliar way. But after the initial strangeness wears off, goal–directed design is a boon — it is a powerful tool for answering the most important questions that crop up during the design phase:
  • What should be the form of the program?
  • How will the user interact with the program?
  • How can the program's functions be most effectively organized?
  • How will the program introduce itself to first–time users?
  • How can the program put an understandable and controllable face on technology?
  • How can the program deal with problems?
  • How will the program help infrequent users become more expert?
  • How can the program provide sufficient depth for expert users?
In About Face, you'll explore new ways to look at what you work with every day, learning how to create workable designs in the real world, on a real deadline, inside a real budget. Sincerely, Alan Cooper President Cooper Interaction Design "Alan Cooper is the ‘Miss Manners' of software design… My advice is to buy two copies— autograph the second and send it to an engineer at Microsoft." — Paul Saffo, Director, Institute for the Future "About Face defines a new interface design vocabulary that speaks to programmers in their own terms. We have come a long way from the time when there were just modal (bad) and modeless (good) interfaces, and this book reflects that progress." — Charles Simonyi, Chief Architect, Microsoft Corp.

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This book has a simple premise: If achieving the user's goals is the basis of our user interface design, then the user will be satisfied and happy. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

26 Reviews
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4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (5)
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The most important book written about UI design so far, 30 Jun 2005
Cooper's first book is still his best one, much better than the "upgraded" About Face 2.0. His ideas were revolutionary back in 1995, and most of them are still waiting to be taken into use in the software industry.

However, this book's main benefit is not about how to *do* UI design but rather the attitude: why do UI design, what's wrong with the current UIs etc. The attitude is 100% correct and sadly missing from most of the textbooks about UI design. Cooper gives out his ideas about what should be fixed in most cases without a solution and he doesn't justify them properly, but even pointing out the problems has more value than approximately 5 standard UI design textbooks put together.

In the middle of the book there is a large amount (~ 100 pages) of rather boring interaction detail advice that you should probably just glance through, but for example chapters 13, 27, 28 and 34 are pure diamond - you should probably buy the book just to read them. I completely stand with the relevancy rating of the chapters my wife Sari put in the web already back in 1999, and I won't repeat it here: just type in "lukuohje about face" in Google to find it.

In summary, my advice is that if you decide to read just one book about UI design, read this one and forget Nielsen, Shneiderman, Norman and others. If you understand the attitude and ideas, it will change your life: you can never look at UI design in the way you did before.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Incisive, invaluable, heavy on Windows. Buy this...and Tog., 24 Feb 1997
By A Customer
Reading this book really will make you wonder why most computer users don't storm software companies with torches and polearms every day. It will also make Mac users wonder if Alan Cooper ever seriously sat down and worked with a Macintosh. A surprising number of his Windows wish-list items are already integrated into the Mac OS. "About Face" is heavily Windows-centric -- almost entirely so.

But not completely. Cooper's intended audience of programmers will find his insights invaluable for development on any and every platform. He's a Windows developer, so he writes in his native terms -- as does Bruce Tognazzini in "Tog on Interface," a Mac-centric volume which should be in a boxed set with "About Face." Neither, fortunately, engages in platform-bashing; each of these authors freely criticizes the shortcomings of his familiar OS.

"About Face" goes from sweeping design principles to nuts-and-bolts detail (wherein lies the Windows-centricity), all in pursuit of his (utterly correct) Holy Grail: Make the software convenient for the user, not for the computer.

The most heinous "computer crimes" are perpetrated carelessly, even with good intentions, by commercial software programmers who focus on the computer instead of on the human who uses it. The victims of these crimes go almost entirely unheard, hardly even realizing they've been wronged. Alan Cooper is the interface police -- and he comes not a moment too soon.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A promising "alpha" draft, 21 Jul 1998
By A Customer
This book leaves me with extremely mixed feelings. It makes some reall good points and paints some very good examples. On the other hand, it is much too thick, by which I mean that there is too much redundancy in it. Sometiems I'd realize that the last couple pages coupld have been said (better) in a single paragraph. I also felt he presented his points badly. Often, his presentation pattern is: "assert, talk, explain why he asserted, back up assertion" or something like that. This made me say "This is idiocy!" only to find, (say) 10 pages later that he had good reasons for making the assertion. If this presentation order were reversed, I think he would sound more credible and be more convincing. There are other minor flaws: too many places where opinion is presented as fact, a lot of "Gosh, why are folks so stupid that they haven't produced quasi-smart gadgets like this?" when it is by no means clear that such things can actually be d! one, realistically. He never mentions who the audience for his suggestions are (presumably the average computer user doing the average thing). Yet, ihs blanket statements can't possibly be applied to all classes of software and users this simply. Having said all that, I'll repeat the opening: there are a lot of good ideas here. If this were software, I'd call this an alpha: it has all the right stuff, but it just needs cleaning up and debugging. I hope there is a second, significantly revised, version of the book done at some point.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Astounding...
"You would not take a visitor to your house in to another room just to shake their hand". So points out the author of "About Face", an excellent resource for intuitive interface... Read more
Published on 12 Oct 2002 by B. Ashley

2.0 out of 5 stars A disappointing book
I bought this book because of the high recomendations it has had and I was very disappointed. There is little in it that isn't covered much better elsewhere. Read more
Published on 9 Dec 1999 by rich@kde.org

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant first step towards great Interaction Design
The software industry is still in the early stages of its evolution towards a distinction between interaction design and program design. Read more
Published on 2 Aug 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars The Future's Bright... The Future's Cooper!
All I can say is Cooper is a god of user interface design! As a fledgling computer programmer, I have had thousands of ideas in the past of methods to improve current user... Read more
Published on 20 April 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye opener!
This book was an eye opener for me. I have been designing user interface software for several years in the robotics industry. Read more
Published on 15 Jan 1999

1.0 out of 5 stars read Ben Shneiderman, Don Norman & Jakob Nielson, not this.
Cooper kvetches too much. This feels more like an infomercial for the Cooper Interface Development Methodology Kit. Bletch! Read more
Published on 15 Jan 1999

3.0 out of 5 stars Read This Review!
Listen to the negative things people have to say about this book with a grain of salt. Listen to the positive things with a bigger grain of salt. Read more
Published on 13 Dec 1998

1.0 out of 5 stars Sophmoric, Disjointed, Overly Creative
I bought this book thinking that it might be something that I could give to our programmers to help them in designing our software. Read more
Published on 25 Aug 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great book which makes you THINK
This book is not a cookbook of precepts, saying do "This" and your application will be great. Rather, it is a collection of concepts for you to ponder. Read more
Published on 22 Aug 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Have for the "Know it all" Developer
I found this book extremely refreshing.

Firstly, this book gives Microsoft (and other vendors) a well-deserved swift kick for some of the hideous ideas they've implanted into... Read more

Published on 19 Jul 1998

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