Customer Reviews

Bringing Design to Software

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a collection of chapters focusing on design and design topics. The chapter authors are from a variety of disciplines including software and product design, technology, architecture, graphic arts, and philosophy. This diversity adds to the richness in which the book addresses "design," expands the notion of the "designer" community of practice, and illustrates the importance of multifunctionality in design by taking lessons of practice from a variety of disciplines. After each chapter a "profile" of a product or situation is provided as a real-life example of the key points of the chapter.

The following themes appeared throughout the book:

· There needs to be a move from product-centered design to user-centered (or maybe use-centered) design. Talking, observing, interacting and listening with the users are key activities in making this happen.

· The move to a user-centered design can be aided by recognizing and professionalizing the role of a designer in the software development process. (in this book people are variously referred to as software designers, interaction designers, artist-designers, software architects, etc.)

· There is a need for tools and materials developed for software designers to create a language of design, and to develop prototypes and models. These things are needed for use in the design process to allow for a "conversation with the materials," --to create opportunities for exploration of the design, which may lead to unexpected characteristics and surprises. These, in turn, allow for reflection and lead to the development of better questions about our design and design process. These tools and methods also allow for communicating ideas, changes and goals to others involved in the design process.

· Design is a team-sport. Successful designers will be familiar with the roles, language and concerns of everyone involved in the design process so as best to include them, and their contributions, into the overall design effort. It's also true that the design process resides within an organization, whose values, culture, management and business concerns have an impact on the success of design efforts. A skillful designer will be aware of (and perhaps challenge) the impact of the organization on the design process to allow the design effort to be as successful as possible.

This is a good thought-starter for anyone interested in broadening their definition of designer and incorporating additional perspectives into their design practices.

The various contributions are inconsistent (writing style varies from riveting to just readable), but Winograd does a good job of tying everyone's contributions together. I particularly liked the use of "profiles" (short pieces highlighting a specific product or concept) that supplemented the longer chapters. Chapter 8 and the subsequent profile on IDEO should be required reading for anyone assigned to a software design project. And everyone involved in human-computer interaction should read Kapor's, "A Software Design Manifesto" (which is Chapter 1).

Winograd brings together a mix of software designers, computer scientists, graphic artists, architects, scientists, and consultants, and their conceptions and methodologies for software design. Each describes their design situations from his or her position of expertise. Each of the "designers" has a similar message, ease of use and interaction must be relevant to the user, not only to the hierarchical structure of the software. Another point in the book is, if software is designed in such a way as to have the user append knowledge, as opposed to throw all daily logic of how things work in their world out the window, the learning curve for new software would be minimal.

The designer's involvement needs to be invoked from the beginning of the software project, and should not be considered as just a "final coat of spray-on aesthetics". Thought and design energy need to be given towards the capabilities of identifying the skill level and needs of the user, so that the user can accomplish his or her tasks while enduring the least amount of frustration. Hopefully the user will also learn something through his or her experience with the software, which would then bring them up to a new level of mastery. The use of design teams, with members encapsulating differing points of view, is emphasized as a successful methodology for the development of such software applications.

"Bringing Design to Software" is not a software design "how-to" book; it is an edited exploration of the nature of software design through dialog. It investigates the concepts of software, design and prototyping as basal considerations for an understanding of the tenets of software design as a practice. The dialog involves looking at design from a number of areas including software design, other design fields, research, instruction and design management. Winograd, et al., have compiled the perspectives of practitioners from the fields mentioned above, many of them responsible for some aspect of some of the most popular applications currently available, and profiled explanatory and illuminating projects and programs to accompany those perspectives. They have woven this collection of experiences into a coherent focus on the factors and issues characteristic of design activities and the inherent "...situated nature of design - a sensitivity to the human context in all its richness and variety," proffering that design is both enabled and constrained by interaction with people.

The book promotes the idea that the most important people in software design are the users. Mitchell Kapor (interface designer for Lotus 1-2-3), the author of chapter 1, says that "...design...(is) where you stand with a foot in two worlds - the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes - and you try to bring the two together." "Bringing Design to Software" attempts to provide a way of looking at the interaction between the users and their world from a software design perspective and should be read by anyone seeking to enhance their ability to design software or to better understand software design considerations.

Don't buy this edition of the book. It is a reissue and it turns out that means the print quality is that of a bad photocopy. I am amazed that Addison-Wesley and ACM put their name on this. Text is pixellated, diagrams streaky ... worse than a bootleg.

One or two of the essays are interesting; the others are either fuzzy attempts at deep thinking ("We need new paradigms! Bartender! New paradigms all 'round!") or spend too much time touting whatever it is the authors have that they want advertised. Inconsistent (in both level and quality), but with some buried nuggets

I got this book to prepare a syllabus on design aspects of software engineering for an undergraduate course in computer science. Despite being more than ten years old, in terms of content, the book is fit for the purpose. Indeed, the authors of this edited volume provide several design perspectives (e.g., graphic design, architecture) on software. So far so good, but how is the reader supposed to read through pages with illegible fonts? The problem is not one of style, but of print quality, which looks like a photocopy from originals made with a dot matrix printer from the 80's.

Great compilation of articles on software related (external) design, insights in design methods and concepts. Well known classics are used as examples, like the Apple Macintosh interface and it's predecessor (Xerox's Star), the spreadsheet and the mother of all prototyping environments: Hypercard. Some articles are in the form of interviews and each chapter is followed by very informative "profiles" by Terry Winograd. Interestingly, the entire concept of Object Orientation is only mentioned in a sideline although a reference to Rumbaugh's Object-oriented Modeling and Design is made.
The bibliography is very impressive.

I had to buy this book for a class; if you're interested in a historical perspective on instructional technology, you might find this interesting. I didn't.