Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: All You Wanted To Know About User Interfaces (But Were Afraid To Ask)
Comment: 'Designing Interfaces' by Jenifer Tidwell is a gorgeous look at all the different types of UI choices available to developers, the pros and cons of using one choice over another, and the goals one hopes to achieve by putting in place one UI solution over another.
Focusing on patterns, this wonderfully laid out and well-written text gives solid input from UI veteran, providing her wisdom and expertise in every section. If you do UI work at your job or just want to learn more about the different UI choices that are out there, this is a great book to pick up. If you have an existing application that users are not happy with, and you want to learn more about what can be done to improve things next time you get the opportunity to go back and update the interface, this is recommended reading before you begin the massive amounts of work that no doubt are staring you in the face.
***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Customer Rating:
Summary: Imparts the language to voice sound design
Comment: Knowing what is possible with technology is one of the advantages software professionals. Some of this insight comes from being connected to the larger technology community. Of course, the rest is about the experience of producing the solution.
The price of this deep insight may have trade-offs in effective disclosure of ideas. This book's potential is in providing a vocabulary for properly expressing the interactive opportunities possible in technology. It also provides a way to structure ideas that help improve a prototype, a product in development, or an existing solution to a more useable form. Reading this book will provide you with insights in human factors and design that don't harbor solely on aesthetics.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Something for your creative toolbox
Comment: Interfaces. Everything has one. Even this website, or journal you are reading.
This book will appeal to designers of websites and to software designers. Today software may run on the web, desktop, handheld or phone. With so many different ways to deliver information and content, its a daunting thing to deal with the differing nuances of each interface - an interface determined by the device.
This book is very up todate, but probably will requrie a new edition by this time next year as next generation phones hit the North American market in full stride.
The strong message in this book is the need for simplicity. Too often a product gets overdesigned. Usually by a product manager. They should be forced fed this book, though that might make them think they are designers, so not a good idea maybe.
Each chapter is divided into two parts.
First is the subject experience such as layout. This section is followed up by a great Patterns showcase of new and familiar interfaces and how they meet the challenges and elements that the chapter discusses.
The chapters themselves are grouped into three parts: overall (OS, web, apps, etc.), specific items (data, user input, text and graphic editors) and polish (style, form and function).
This is a great reference, and - yes - and lazy Sunday afternoon read. You should be a design professional and ahve experience under your belt such as nav bars, dialogue boxes and what a drop down is, and what it is used for effectively. This book does not tell or show you how to get that golden interface (nor should it). Designing Interfaces explains some of the key things that you should know inheritly (if not know, after you have read it) and helps strenghten your cerebral toolbox and amaze yourself.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great idea generator
Comment: The graphical approach to this book makes all the difference. The content is good, overall, but what makes it most useful is the ability to flip through the pages and see examples of how other software companies have deployed variations of interfaces (with both good and bad results).
If you're designing applications this belongs on your bookshelf.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Buy it, read it, pass it on!
Comment: Simply brilliant! Absolutely the best book on UI design patterns, it is also one of the best new books on interaction design in years. Clear, crisp, and engagingly written, this text manages a mix of fundamentals and sophisticated concepts to satisfy beginners and boffins alike. It goes way beyond the trivially obvious of so many "pattern languages" to explore and expose subtle tradeoffs and genuine dilemmas in interaction design. More than just a collection of patterns, this is virtually a complete course in modern visual and interaction design. It is must reading for designers of every ilk.
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