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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.437
EAN: 9780120884360
ISBN: 0120884364
Label: Morgan Kaufmann
Manufacturer: Morgan Kaufmann
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 704
Publication Date: 2005-03-22
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Studio: Morgan Kaufmann
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Were I teaching a course in interface design, this would be the text
Comment: I can't tell you how many people I've told to read this book. It's one of the first references I go to on my shelf and I've read it through more than once. Were I to teach a course in interface design (and I have considered it) I would use "User Interface Design and Evaluation" as the text, as it covers the topics from understanding users through testing the usability of the design -- from soup to nuts. The book is full of concrete examples and exercises. I've suggested this book to a number of people new to user experience, as a great place to get started.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Thorough Overview of the Entire Field of Usability
Comment: There are a number of helpful, introductory books available about web usability. Namely, "Don't Make Me Think," by Steve Krug, and "Designing the Obvious," by Robert Hoekman, are two I would highly recommend. Both offer general principals to keep in mind while designing web sites.
Neither, however, offers as thorough an overview of the entire field of usability as does "User Interface Design and Evaluation." I found that after having been convinced of the importance of usability by Krug and Hoekman, this book provided the depth and breadth of coverage necessary to gain a thorough understanding of usability.
Usability isn't just about making sure that links are clearly identified and navigation schemes are consistent. More fundamentally, it is necessary to identify the critical user tasks that your application must support. The discussion of Task Analysis in chapter 4 is particularly helpful in this regard. The concept of a 'cognitive walkthrough' is introduced as an effective method of task analysis. I have since utilized this concept regularly as a very effective way to gain a better understanding of tasks from the user's perspective.
Other concepts such as personas, conceptual design, and usability evaluation are covered equally as thoroughly. This book has the sensibility, thoroughness, and design of a text book. If you are looking to move beyond a cursory understanding of usability, and acquire an understanding of the entire field, I would recommend you buy this book.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: elementary school textbook
Comment: I would like to start a graduate course on UI design, and this textbook seemed to be a perfect starting point to build upon. It is based on a well estabilished Open University graduate course and the well organized table of contents included nearly all important topics I wanted to cover. Checking out the sample chapter I found it clearly structured. The style of the illustrations was a bit off regarding my taste, but I did not take it as a cruicial issue.
I ordered the book and started to read it. It was very hard to keep focusing after 5 pages. The material was presented as a set of rules to follow, and not as an introduction to concepts. You will find bulleted lists of words everywhere which look organized but cannot be digested. I really felt like my mind was being seized in a cramp.
I gave the book to my student with the advice: 'this is to be used as a reference book only, difficult to read on its own'. She gave it back next week saying that the book insults the readers by providing exaggerated examples to illustrate simple concepts. We agreed on that it was written in a style we last saw in an elementary school textbook and that we won't use it anymore.
Currently I read the 'Design of Everyday Things' from Donald A. Norman. It is not an UI textbook, but gave me back the hope that there is another way to cover/teach this field.
I appreciate the amount of work put into writing the book, and there might be people out there who find it useful, but it is not my style of book.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Whether you are a professional new to the user-centered design field, or an experienced designer who needs to learn the fundamentals of user interface design and evaluation, this book can lead the way.
What will you get from this book? Based on a course from the Open University, UK which has been taught to over a thousand professionals and students, this book presents an overview of the field. It illustrates the benefits of a user-centered approach to the design of software, computer systems, and web sites, and provides a clear and practical discussion of requirements gathering; developing interaction design from user requirements; and user interface evaluation. The book's coverage includes established HCI topics-for example, visibility, affordance, feedback, metaphors, mental models, and the like-combined with practical guidelines for contemporary designs and current trends, which makes for a winning combination. You get a clear presentation of ideas, illustrations of concepts, using real-world applications.
This book will help you develop all the skills necessary for iterative user-centered design, and provides a firm foundation for user interface design and evaluation on which to build.
* Co-published by the Open University, UK.
* Covers the design of graphical user interfaces, web sites, and interfaces for embedded systems.
* Full color production, with activities, projects, hundreds of illustrations, and industrial applications.
* A supporting web site includes sample exam paper, numerous activities to practice the concepts learned, and a set of review questions to test your own learning-plus web resources.
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