Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) [Paperback]

Dave Collins (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 080535350X | ISBN-13: 978-0805353501 | Publication Date: January 10, 1995 | Edition: 1

Collins presents a principled approach to designing user interfaces for systems built on modern hardware and software platforms. In the text, Collins defines object-oriented user interface, presents a methodology for designing both the visible features of the interface and the software structures underlying it, and demonstrates how this methodology fits into the context of object-oriented development. Collins provides the reader with a single conceptual model, grounded in standard engineering practice, to guide both external and internal design of the user interface. The author's methodology, based on object-oriented principles, is consistent with other object-oriented methodologies for system and database design.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces presents a principled approach to developing user interfaces for modern hardware and software platforms. It defines what an object-oriented user interface is, and provides a methodology for designing the visible interface and its underlying software. The principles and practices presented here are based on development experience and academic research. The book is intended for both working developers and for students and teachers in academic and industrial settings.

Object-orientation reflects the way people --including end users and system developers-- perceive, think, and act. The foundation for this book is the idea that the same set of object-oriented principles can be applied to end user interfaces and to the internal system structures that implement them. This results in a user interface design methodology that fits seamlessly into object-oriented design and development processes for entire systems.

Design, if it is meaningful, occurs in the context of development (even for students, exercises must assess how the design will function when it is built). To get the most out of this book, it is important to go beyond it and do real designs. Start with tasks that people do, sketch designs for interfaces, implement the sketches, and show the results to potential users. Designers are often surprised by how hard it is to implement simple ideas, and by the way users respond to them. This surprise factor never goes away; becoming comfortable with it is a sign of maturity as a user interface designer.

The same thing goes for this book, I have tested the principles and practices in my own projects and by analyzing their use in other projects large and small. Nevertheless, I am sure there are still surprises in store, and lessons to be learned, I invite your comments and suggestions about any aspect of the book, particularly its applicability to development projects you are involved in. Comments can be sent by electronic mail to [e-mail], or by post to P.O. Box 24, Pleasantville, NY 10570, USA.Background

Though I was not aware of it at the time, the motivation for this book probably came in 1984 when I first saw an Apple Macintosh computer. I was already a user of graphics systems, but the idea of a computer on which everything was done by manipulating visible images was novel, and profoundly appealing.

Conscious work started in early 1988, when my colleague, Chamond Liu, was putting together a conference on object-oriented systems (held at the IBM Education Center at Thornwood, New York). I was interested both in object-oriented programming languages and in the usability of human-computer interfaces, and Chamond asked me to chair a session on object-oriented user interfaces. He also asked me to make a presentation dealing with the connection (or lack of connection) between the principles of objects, classes, and inheritance as applied to programming languages, and analogous principles applied to the external behavior of user interfaces.

Chamond's request started me on a long journey. As I digested literature from areas as diverse as computer architecture and cognitive psychology, connections became apparent not only between user interfaces and programming, but between systems and methods used to develop them. These connections were manifest in the construction of many significant object-oriented systems, as described by the people who had designed and built them. Since then, my understanding of the connections has been deepened by experience as both developer and user of systems with object-oriented user interfaces.

Starting with my talk at the conference in November of 1988, discussion and presentation of the ideas went on through many tutorials and short courses on aspects of object-oriented user interfaces. Talking with designers and implementors who attended these helped to confirm the basic ideas, and expanded my understanding in areas where I lacked personal experience.

There is now a large body of ideas and methods for object-oriented user interface design. I think it is fair to say that a consensus exists on at least the broad outline of a methodology. By 1992 I felt that making these ideas and methods available within a coherent development framework would advance the practice of design, and the result is this book.Production

This book was produced in camera-ready form from a manuscript written in Microsoft Word and FrameMaker, running on Microsoft Windows. It is set in fonts from the TrueType Lucida family. Screen images and halftone art were processed with ImagePals, from Ulead Systems. Line art was prepared with CorelDraw, from Corel. Application examples done specifically for the book were coded with Smalltalk/V from Digitalk, ParcPlace Smalltalk, and Borland C++.

The availability of tools allowing an author to produce a book, with all its text and artwork, is a remarkable example of what computers can do, and part of a revolution as profound as what followed the invention of moveable type in the 16th century. I thank the developers of the products that allowed me to accomplish this feat, and encourage them to make it easier in the future.Acknowledgments

A book as broad as this synthesizes the work of many people. Ideas have come from published papers, presentations, conversations, and user interface implementations in products and research prototypes. Specific ideas that I have used are acknowledged in the text. In addition, many people have contributed to my general understanding of the field and opened my eyes to possibilities for user interface designs. Though I take full responsibility for any deficiencies in this book, its value could not have been achieved without those people.

The first twenty years of my career in the computer industry were spent in daily contact with customers and end users of computers. I owe my first debt to them, for teaching me things about the experience of human-computer interaction that I could not have learned in any other way.

I have given courses and tutorials based on this material to people from many disciplines and with varying amounts of background knowledge. I thank all the students in those courses for their patience and their feedback. Students pointing out problems based on their experiences led to many improvements in the ideas and methods.

Developing a curriculum in software usability for IBM over the period 1988-1992 provided the opportunity to hear ideas from leading people in the field of user interface design. Contact with people like Bill Buxton, Charles Irby, Ted Nelson, Ben Shneiderman, Edward Tufte, and many others was both educational and inspiring. I am grateful for the support of the human factors community within IBM during that same period. People too numerous to mention gave up their time to help me understand how human factors could be applied in development. Walter Baker, John Bennett, John Gould, Dick Granda, Richard Halstead-Nussloch, and Ron Shapiro were particularly generous. The information development and graphic design communities in IBM also helped me to understand the role of those disciplines in user interface design and development.

Managers and colleagues at the IBM Systems Research Education Center and at the User Interface Institute of IBM Research were consistently helpful and supportive. Chamond Liu, as mentioned above, provided the key idea that got me started. Bob Mack encouraged both the book and the research behind many of the ideas about implementation. Many others provided helpful ideas and encouragement.

Thanks to Dan Joraanstad, of Benjamin Cummings, and Grady Booch, series editor for the Object-Oriented Software Engineering series, for encouraging the book at its inception. Thanks also to Tim Cox, Ari Davidow, Ray Kanarr, Laura Cheu, Melissa Standen, Lisa Jahred, and others at Benjamin/Cummings for keeping it on track as we went along.

The following people provided concrete help while the book was being written, in the form of discussions or reviews of chapter drafts: Walter Baker, Steve Berczuk, Katherine Betz, Grady Booch, Steve Goetze, Reza Jalili, Chamond Liu, Bob Mack, Linn Marks, Brad A. Myers, Steve Otto, Jim Poretta, James Purtilo, Mary Beth Rosson, Kenneth S. Rubin, Drasko Sotirovski, George Vanecek, Mark Wilkes, and Kirk Wolf. Their feedback improved both the content and style of the book.

Thanks most of all to Linn Marks. She has given me a steady stream of visual design ideas for user interfaces and for the book itself. Many ideas here were generated or sharpened in the course of long discussions on the art and science of design. She also provided the constant encouragement I needed to persevere through the period of more than a year, while I struggled to get these ideas down on paper in the form in which you now see them. 080535350XP04062001

From the Back Cover

Collins presents a principled approach to designing user interfaces for systems built on modern hardware and software platforms. In the text, Collins defines object-oriented user interface, presents a methodology for designing both the visible features of the interface and the software structures underlying it, and demonstrates how this methodology fits into the context of object-oriented development. Collins provides the reader with a single conceptual model, grounded in standard engineering practice, to guide both external and internal design of the user interface. The author's methodology, based on object-oriented principles, is consistent with other object-oriented methodologies for system and database design.

1. Delivers a clear definition of "object-oriented" user interface consistent with other OO paradigms and contexts
2. Draws on many diverse fields such as software engineering, cognitive psychology, human factors, and graphic design
3. Covers the design of the visible interface and the software that implements it
4. Describes object-oriented implementation architectures which flow naturally from the user interface
5. Provides examples in C++ and Smalltalk to illustrate the implementation of object-oriented user interfaces

080535350XB04062001

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Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (January 10, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080535350X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805353501
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,260,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for all developing computer applications, May 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) (Paperback)

Collins cuts right to the quick on this often misunderstood topic. Project manager thru programmer will profit from having this on their desk. It you remember COBOL, FORTRAN and PL/1, then this sbook is syour key to understanding the "new age" of object orientness. Incredibly concise, crystal clear discussions of all the important issues.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good book if you can read it, November 2, 1999

By 

John Margaglione (Spicewood, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) (Paperback)

The author of this book has obviously spend a great deal of time in academia -- much to his detriment. The book reads like a college-level psychology textbook, complete with references to the myriad other people upon whom his work is drawn.

For example, the author is not content to just define a term and move on. Instead, he reviews the entire history of the term, what other people have thought about the term, and then summarizes all of the thoughts. Geez, there are even examples at the end of each chapter.

If my review is hard to read, I blame it on the fact that I have been reading this book for the past hour.

But, if you can get past the pedantic writing style, you will find a good deal of useful information. The concept of object-oriented user interfaces is often misinterpreted and/or mis-implemented. There is a detailed history of the object-oriented GUI, and good discussions on the human factors that lead to good GUI designs.

One note is that the book was published in 1995, so brace yourself for lots of examples from the leading GUI of that time: Windows 3.1! Windows NT is only mentioned as 'Cairo'. But as is true of many design models, the age of the book really has no relevance.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the rare books that addresses OO style GUI design, October 20, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (San Francisco, California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) (Paperback)

This excellent book is one of a mere few books that thoroughly and competently addresses object-oriented (OO) style of graphical user interface (GUI) design. Note that OO GUI *style* is entirely independent of whether the GUI is implemented with OO technology. A strength of this book is its comprehensibility by programmers, in addition to GUI designers.

Here are two other essential ones: Design Guide for Multiplatform Graphical User Interfaces (LP R13, Issue 3, by McFarland & Dayton, 1995, Piscataway, NJ: Bellcore), and Object-Oriented Interface Design: IBM Common User Access guidelines (by IBM, Carmel, IN: Que Corp.)

Here's a merely fair quality but essential one: The Windows guidelines for software design. (by Microsoft, 1995, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press).