Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design | 
 enlarge | Author: Jenifer Tidwell
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $49.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 4889
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0596008031
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.437
EAN: 9780596008031
ASIN: 0596008031
Publication Date: November 21, 2005
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Product Description
Designing a good interface isn't easy. Users demand software that is well-behaved, good-looking, and easy to use. Your clients or managers demand originality and a short time to market. Your UI technology -- web applications, desktop software, even mobile devices -- may give you the tools you need, but little guidance on how to use them well. UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence. "Designing Interfaces" captures those best practices as design patterns -- solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand. Each pattern contains practical advice that you can put to use immediately, plus a variety of examples illustrated in full color. You'll get recommendations, design alternatives, and warnings on when not to use them. Each chapter's introduction describes key design concepts that are often misunderstood, such as affordances, visual hierarchy, navigational distance, and the use of color. These give you a deeper understanding of why the patterns work, and how to apply them with more insight. A book can't design an interface for you -- no foolproof design process is given here -- but "Designing Interfaces" does give you concrete ideas that you can mix and recombine as you see fit. Experienced designers can use it as a sourcebook of ideas. Novice designers will find a roadmap to the world of interface and interaction design, with enough guidance to start using these patterns immediately.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 41 more reviews...
 Excellent August 20, 2008
Nutshell review - If you design interfaces for any software project you should read this book. It covers all the bases, is extensive, comprehensive, well written and easy to use as a resource or refresher in interface design techniques.
A staple for your design library July 10, 2008
Designing Interfaces catalogs UI design patterns in use and provides guidance in using them, with plenty of examples. It takes a consistent approach to describing each pattern: What it is, when to use it, why to use it and how to use it. The book is both a good overview and a reference. If UI design is an area of interest to you, then read through this book and then keep it available as a reference.
 Great interface component reference June 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
For many years now, I have been coding web sites and applications. Through all that time, nothing has ever been as tough for me as coming up with a design that I am truly happy with. Attempting to create an optimized and stable algorithm or coming up with the answer to a problem that requires non-conventional coding practices; these are always challenges, but ones that are most often eventually solved. Creating that mythical eye catching never-been-done-before layout is something that I have attempted and, sadly to say, usually fell short on. I suppose you'd consider this a case of a programmer wanting an application to not look like a programmer designed it. This was my reason for picking up the Designing Interfaces book.
The first chapter talks about how users think. However, as I finished the chapter introduction, I realized that the author and I are definitely coming from two very different places. In my experience, I get very little hands-on with the user base, or the client that the application is being built for. Even if I do talk to the client directly, instead of going through the levels of proper channels, they usually have a set design in mind, limiting my choices. That's not to say, however, that a good designer couldn't be creative given these design constraints. On the other hand, the author mentions that building a user profile is something that eats up a lot of time though it is always worth it, and while I agree whole-heartedly, sometimes a deadline approaches too quickly or it's just not in the budget to give this the time it truly needs. Past this quibble and reading on, the patterns of human behavior in the first chapter give an almost checklist of things to keep in mind when designing, and even though you read and probably think, "common sense", it is very helpful to have in one place.
As the chapters passed one by one, I found the same patterns in my reading emerge. Read the introduction to the chapters the first time you pick up the book to get an idea behind why that particular chapter is important, or, at the very least, for posterity. After that, just skip to the section in each chapter marked as "Patterns" when you need them. These patterns are where the book really shines. Each of these patterns are laid out in a similar way letting you quickly see what it is, when you would use it, why it is used (as in why it is beneficial to your user), how you create the pattern, and then some examples of its use. Considering that there are nine chapters, each with about ten different patterns, this book contains a wealth of information.
I was originally hoping for more of a design lesson; color theory, placement with a hint of golden ratios, maybe a small college art class packed into 331 pages. Though I did not get much of that, at least until the last chapter or two, I definitely found an excellent reference to keep by my side. For example, if I'm building a layout, I'll open the book right up to chapter 4 to see what the common options are; for showing hierarchical data, I'm opening up to chapter 6 to see when and for what reason I might want to go with a tree map over a normal tree. I couldn't recommend it more to someone wanting a helpful component pocket guide of sorts for interfaces, but if you are looking for theory, I'd go with something more geared in that direction.
More Practical Concepts, Less Psychology April 11, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
While I don't own a physical copy of this book, I had used an electronic form of it in the course of my studies.
I will first forewarn those who are interested in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that this text does not heavily focus on the science of Psychological principles such as Gestalt Perception, nor does it concern itself with techniques/methodologies such as Threading and Model-View-Controller (MVC) to improve the performance of programs. The focus of this text falls strictly on the layout and/or graphical design in regards to interfaces and web pages.
As well, each principle has certain uses depending on the medium used, which the text does a good job of elaborating (for example, cell phone programs would not be designed the same as a full Windows Application).
A word to the wise though: Requirements must come before Design. There are certain design principles outlined in this text that cannot be realized if the very requirements of the program do not allow for it - For example, Microsoft Office 2007 has in many ways disregarded the principle of habituation/familiarity (as it looks much different from typical Windows Applications in general). One will still need the skill of compromise in order to apply the information presented here effectively in the real world.
Intelligent and Invaluable April 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Jenifer Tidwell's pattern based approach is amazingly good! She carefully organizes and enumerates a wide variety of effective user interface options for both small screen (ie: Blackberry, cell phones) and larger screen forms. I am not an expert in UI design by any means (I have read Donald Norman, Tagnazzini, Shneiderman and Mayhew but I have no background in graphic design), but I do project reviews and this book has given me some insight into problems and potential fixes in a few areas. I was also able to pick up on a couple of "hidden" features in some of the software tools that I do use and to label and critique several "features" that weren't working well.
The style is easy to read. Tidwell explains, illustrates and covers the merits of each user interface. The research is solid. For example she notes that the Fisheye menu, while slightly favored by programmers and experienced users is considered confusing by and less effective for casual users and recommends a hierarchical approach.
I recommend this book for corporate libraries and as a reference for individuals and groups working on what might become overly complicated design.
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