Customer Reviews

Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This invaluable review of the Processes & Business Benefits of User Interface/User Experience Design, provides so much unique and hard won insight into the process of developing superior user interfaces, the goals of users and the business, and in quantifying the benefits of UX design that I can only award it an outstanding Five Star review. One observation, that full engagement with the true goals of users is the end purpose of UI Design, is in itself worth the cost of this excellent book. But in spite of my viewing this book as revolutionary and offering outstanding and unique insights into what User Experience is, how to achieve it and what its benefits are, I do have one major criticism of this otherwise excellent book, its narrative approach and careful explication of its arguments on what the team at "Effective UI" lead to step by step discovery of these insights; there doesn't appear to be a top-down structure allowing for easy browsing of the book; it must be studied at length. Also, an experienced student of Interaction Design and User Experience cannot easily find what the new insights of this book are at a single glance, or find its prescription for a particular step of the design process.

This is an excellent and insightful book on UI Design and User Experience based on the consulting experience of a leading firm in this industry. But the book narrating their experience must be studied, it is difficult to browse.

--Ira Laefsky
MSE, MBA IT & HCI Researcher

Read this book, but first make sure it's the book you think it is!

I dug this book because I wanted to explore the headspace, perspective, context and helpful flows that lend themselves to building the right experience for the right users.

Just like the designers, developers, architects and business-heads I work with, my job includes working to ensure the right people are on board with the best approaches and the best solutions. For me, this book took a super-realistic approach towards the challenges and opportunities that come with driving to get the right UX solutions.

It's not crazy to say that building software that performs is really difficult. That said, designing and building software that performs and offers the right experience comes with a whole different level of difficulty (it's way harder). This book definitely isn't a step-by-step manual - there's no 2+2=4 kind of formula for good UX.

The way I see it, there are enough "how-to" books out there if I wanted to learn more about building software that performs. There are however very few books that offer insight into successful approach and philosophy behind setting the business/design/development table for building the right experience for the right users - this is one of those rare books. I found helpful (and still find it helpful) because I care about UX and not just impressive tech and performance.

The book is meant to be a review for project managers and executives who want to manage projects towards higher user adoption. The negative reviewers obviously have not taken the time to read the description and the purpose of the book.

Funny, because I hear many designers and developers complain about how frustrated they are with mangers that don't understand how to manage software products towards user experience. Perhaps the negative reviewers would find value from the book if they handed it to their boss so everyone is on the same page.

The most valuable review comes from Ira Laefsky, who is an independent expert in the field..

Creating attractive and useful UI requires buy-in, support and input from people across the business. Effective UI is about more than just creating a good design, it is a resource that can help you effectively work and communicate with the project team, resulting in a usable, useful and innovative software.

This book hits the nail on the head as to the root cause of the failure of most UX driven software development ventures, AND gives refreshing perspective on the right way to go about things. Definitely worth a read.

The authors of this book share many great insights into software project management, many of which I can confirm from my own experience. So why is the book called Effective UI? It does very little to describe tangible steps that need to be taken to introduce more effective design and development practices that will lead to better user experiences. Many insights the authors share such as "the raw materials that go into building a software product are the intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity of the team that builds it" risk sounding trite. Of course it is hard to fault the authors for sharing such insights because they may not be obvious to everyone. But I think it's fair to say that people thinking of buying this book will expect something quite different, as I did. In Chapter 7, for example, they describe how to map high-level workflows to help define requirements, making platform and framework choices, mapping interactions with external systems, defining business logic, how to use revision control and automated testing. Perhaps the authors felt it was necessary to cover these topics, even cursorily, but the topics really belong in a book called "Software Engineering" or "Software Project Management", not a book called "Effective UI". If someone you know has a copy of this book to borrow, you probably will not regret reading it, but I can't recommend buying the book as you will probably be getting something quite different than what you expect.

If you are looking for a good book on UI design principles, methods, tips and tricks, with concrete examples and suggestions, then don't bother spending your money on this tome. It should have been titled "Effective PM (for beginners)", as it's almost exclusively about project management rather than UI design.

If you are familiar with iterative development practices, agile, the perils of waterfall, requirements analysis, stakeholder relations, team building and the overall software project management process, then you will find nothing new in this book. The first few chapters read like a marketing brochure for the Effective UI consulting group. If you know little of these areas, or have a manager/stakeholder that you want to try to convert, then this book might provide some value as a high level introduction to software project management.

To me, this was very disappointing. I have dozens and dozens of O'Reilly books, decades of SW dev experience from C-level on down, and this is the first O'Reilly book that I've purchased that I would send back (if that just wasn't worth the time/trouble to do so). I'll probably just give it to the Goodwill charity, and hope that someone can benefit from it.

With it's current title, I rate this barely as a 1, and then only because they included some interesting, albeit barely relevant, quotes from Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. If they had changed the title to "Effective PM - An Introduction to Software Development management/practices" then it might rate a 3.

O'Reilly dropped the ball on this one, IMO.

Has this ever happened to you?

Boss: "We have a new project! It's due in Q2 and it's gonna be great!"
You: "Excellent. What's it do?"
Boss: "I'm not sure yet. You guys get to work and I'll go upstairs and get the requirements."

If so, this book and some patience might really pay off.

I'm a senior software developer who has recently moved to a product owner position in my firm. I have long been interested (and am well read) in software methodologies and in Agile in particular. This book won't magically fix a development team's process issues, but it does suggest a robust (yet Agile) process that one could adapt to their own situation.

The first rule of any Agile process is that it can be changed to fit the environment. If you're either creating a new process or trying to refine an existing process, this book is a great starting point. There are lots of examples and easy to understand metaphors that can help make the ROI argument for user-centric Agile in your organization.

Having read the negative reviews on this book it seems that judging a book by it's cover just didn't work for these folks. If you want to build an effective GUI, this is not the right book. If you want to explore a software development methodology that values user input and user experience as the cornerstone of your process, buy a copy for everyone in your organization.

This book delivers exactly what it promises. If you are new to software development and want your team or customers to be on the same page this is a must read. We will be recommending this book to all of our clients. The advice within can help bridge any communication gap between your team and project stakeholders, an excellent resource. Thank you.

This is NOT a book about creating UIs (user interfaces) as the title might suggest.

It's a book about politics and how to sell importance of UX inside your big and bulky organisation. I'd rate it higher if it were titled properly (though I would never bought it in the first place).