Customer Reviews

The Essential Guide to User Interface Design: An Introduction to GUI Design Principles and Techniques

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

 

 

For a book that claims to be the definitive guide, its content is very old. The dialogs look like they are from the early 90s. And, so are the standards cited. The Microsoft guidelines from 1995 are cited as a current reference. I supposed someone could try to claim that the lessons presented are 'timeless', but to me, that is ridiculous. User interfaces are not timeless.

The larger problem I have is the redundancy. The same information is presented over, and over, and over. Eliminate the redundancy, and the book would be 1/2 of its size.

"The Essential Guide to User Interface Design" is a huge, massive book that delves very quickly into the dirty details of UI and GUI design. The author, Galitz, has been in the trenches since the earliest computers that actually did interface to humans (predating the PC). He is indisputably an expert and authoritative source for what works, and doesn't, when it comes to UI/GUI design.

The first of two substantial criticisms I have of this book is ironically one of its (and the author's) strengths - it is authoritative because Galitz has been at the forefront of UI research since the beginning, but he puts too much of that historical information into this book. As historical context it has some value, but too much of it leaves one with the feeling that the book is somewhat dated. Editing out the excess detail about text-based CRT displays might leave it feeling more current (the current GUI information is there, but is diluted too much by the historic information).

My second criticism is that the book could also use substantial editing to reduce its bulk, without eliminating any valuable information (of which there is a great deal); there is a lot of redundancy. Some is fine for reinforcing the author's points, but this book has too much - I have frequently read through a bulleted list of design points (presented first), only to then read exactly the same information in a slightly expanded form over many more pages. This is specifically true in what might be considered the heart of this book - the fourth chapter of Part 2; Step 3: Principles of Good Interface and Screen Design. It covers in detail part three of the author's fourteen-step procedure for UI design. This chapter alone is about 180 pages long! With tighter editing it (and the book) could probably be shrunk by 1/3 without any loss of information.

That said, even though this may not be the most concise source of (application and web) UI design guidelines, it makes up for that in breadth and depth, and the credibility and authority of its author.

Mr. Galitz's reasons for using design standards and the detailed consequences of poor design are backed up by reasearch. He gives specific recommendations for standards such as typefaces, point size, label and caption styles, etc. He explains and uses a good shorthand throughout the book for items as "signal" versus "noise." This is handy to quickly distinguish between things that are good/favorable/communicative/useful compared to things that are interfering/obstructive/not useful. This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to understand the "why" of good screen design and then learn the "what."

As a practising information designer I found this to be an excellent source of information, especially for students. This book takes people back to basics, something that a lot of modern IT "professionals" overlook.

This was a decent book on UI design. It's a big one and there is lots of reading, but it breaks it all down very well. I would recommend for anyone interested in UI.

This was an excellent transaction. I was a week late getting started with a masters class which required this book. I purchased a used like new book to save some dollars. This purchase was exactly as it advertised - "like new." The shipping was prompt.

It has good information that is still relevant for XP and Vista, but is mostly geared towards older versions of Windows.