Customer Reviews

HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science (Interactive Technologies)

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Working through this book, I am constantly amazed at the number of topics covered and the depth and clarity of the authors (and in some cases, the entertaining story they tell). There is much important theory that exists in HCI and I have not found a book that does such a wonderful job bringing it, and the proper author to explain it, all together. Previously, it was a chore to track down the important theoretical works, not so now.

This book is NOT going to help you build better webpages or for that matter, teach you to build a better GUI. Do not expect it to as HCI is only marginally about this. HCI is more importantly about the work and activity people perform on a computer and through a computer with others. If you do not have this concept in mind, do not read this book as you will waste your time (and possibly write a bad review for it). If you are intrigued, read "The Design of Everyday Things" to give you the basic philosophy of HCI and this book to give you the theory of it.

Unfortunately, some chapters are not as strong as others and the binding of them all together is not as strong as it could be to give a complete picture of the field. That said, this is an important milestone for HCI and should be readable (and read) by all who have taken a basic HCI course.

I've been an information architect for most of my career but I only started teaching college students fairly recently. Now, there's a difference between training professionals (managers and executives) and students fresh out of high school. This book explains everything I need for my students to grasp the importance of human-computer interaction in their future careers. Unfortunately, it suffers from too much scientific jargon. I find myself constantly groping for ways to tone down words such as "one-key with disambiguation", replacing them with simpler terms such as "dictionary". Ironically, chapter 5 discusses the importance of simplifying your language in order to facilitate understanding between the designer (you) and the users (your customers). I guess, they're not really practicing what they preach. My students ask me if they could buy this book as their reference guide, but I shudder to think of the migraine they'd get from trying to wade through the jargons. They're future multimedia artists, not rocket scientists.

It's a difficult book to read. It assumes you are at graduate or post-graduate level and already know a lot about the topic. I am working on my Master's in Interaction Design and I found myself being forced to re-read paragraphs because I had no idea what I just read! On the other hand, the book goes deep into HCI issues and methods and often leaves you with good research questions. If you're looking for a book to help you with real issues related to interface design or product usability, this isn't it. This book is all about theory. It's boring at best.

It all comes down to this: If you're all about theory, this book is for you. If you want to be able to apply what you read to real-world situations - get something else.

I have never encountered so many grammatical errors, mostly in the form of omitted auxiliary verbs and the like, as in this text. I also found certain chapters poorly written due to a paucity of examples provided for conceptual challenging material.

Otherwise, this is an excellent collection of chapters deeply rooted in the literature.