Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Good but not a 'must have', 29 Aug 2001
By A Customer
An enlightening book, much in the same vein as "Don't make me think". It even has the token chapter on designing for the web! (where users are even less likely to be computer literate)Although the title refers to being specifically for 'programmers' it's not focused at programmers per se, more at applications developed by programmers, and then used by everyone. Well written and often well argued, although occasionally contadictory. The examples used in the book, although timely, tend to feature and focus on bad design rather than pointing to a good design and saying why. I suppose this helps you to avoid the same mistakes, but you might just as easily make different ones! I wouldn't take the content as gospel, but it did create a few interesting discussion points between developers at work. If you've not read a book on Usability/UI for a while then you could do worse than this - especially for the way it points out some of microsofts stupidest mistakes. (moving the start button in and up 2px!)
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Experienced, Perceptive, and Easy to Read, 26 Sep 2002
This is a great book. It is written for those programmers that know they don't know much about user interfaces, but also know they'll have to make the decisions because their employer doesn't have anyone else. From a mainly Windows point of view, it goes through common features in dialogue boxes, menus, task structure, and so on, discussing the common principles and things that are easy to fix.It points out that users can't remember and can't use the mouse. Convention-following design is often better simply because it doesn't surprise users. Things that take you weeks to code may be experienced by the user in seconds, so they had better be clear. The book is very easy to read, in plain English with plenty of screen shots. It says things that all application programmers should know. I think of it as being the desktop-application equivalent to "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, which is about web usability.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Highly enjoyable read, 17 April 2002
By A Customer
I'll start by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed this book; it's been a long time since I read something that I actually wanted to take home with me.
That said, it's a very short book and doesn't have a lot to say. Unlike every other UI book ever written there are no rules, no guidelines, not even much in the way of suggestions. It doesn't tell you what to do or not do and it doesn't tell you when or even why!
So why the five-star rating? Because the one underlying message that's hammered (entertainingly) home over 135 pages is so incredibly vital and I can't think of anywhere else I've ever seen it actually written down. The message is very simple - think about what you're doing. Think about the interface you're designing, what it's going to be used for and who by. This is the first book I've ever read where the author actually seems to understand that no set of rules can possibly cover all the bases and therefore it is equally applicable whether you're designing a complex Windows application or a single-screen web page.
I'd imagine there are some pixel-perfect uniformity junkies out there who might hate this book, but to everyone else - read and enjoy!
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