Customer Reviews

Interface Design: The Art of Developing Easy-to-Use Software

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

 

 

All too often, books on interface design can be overly academic discussions of theoritcal design issues that are interesting only to other user interface designers.

Not so with this book. Mr. Bickford's writing style is accessible and geared toward general users, designers and developers. His coverage of the subject matter is informed and non-technical--you will certainly find it useful whether you are a commercial application developer, multimedia author, or designing applications and sites for the Internet. He argues very eloquently for concepts like elegance, intelligence and thoughtfulness--traits missing in much of today's bloated operating systems and applications (hello Redmond?). He covers both major desktop platforms, PC and Macintosh, citing examples of the virtues and pitfalls of each OS's operations. He also delves into other media, including an intelligent, if conservative, treatment of web design. I am hoping the next edition will be updated with more web coverage.

Mr. Bickford's credentials are impressive. He is a former writer for the Apple Directions developer newsletter writing regularly on usability and interface issues. He is very adept at making complex concepts simple through the use of metaphor, humor, and anecdotes gleaned from his years of real-world experience.

If you are looking for an accessible and entertaining book that will help you consider your interfaces from a more enlightened perspective, you should definitely pick this book up.

Like the topic it covers, this book has a friendly interface. Unlike most technical books, I found Bickford's text downright entertaining. For example, he uses the analogy of a good waiter in a fine restaurant to drive in the idea of transparent interface, and house-hunting to help designers understand how databases ought to work. Bickford is an excellent teacher - he knows how to make his subject appealing and accessible. (It figures -- given appeal and accessibility are his criteria for good interface.)

The book is somewhat Macintosh-centric, given the fact that most of the chapters originally appeared in an Apple Computer newsletter. Nontheless, his ideas and philosophy has helped me build better web sites.

This book really makes me ambivalent. It is essentially a collection of colums on the subject of "Human Interface" written for Apple's developer news magazine. Thus the number of topics covered by the book is immense. In 38 (!) chapters (that is 6 pages per chapter in average) Peter Bickford covers almost everything that has to do with interface design, ranging from database interface design, design of icons, the use of music, designing games, information systems, etc. etc. What makes me award this book three stars after all is the fact that it is a joy to read the book. It takes not more than a few hours to whizz through the pages which do contain several words of wizdom useful to everybody no matter their level of experience. The use of small case stories throughout the book is nice and adds positively to the overall experience. If you want to start a dialog with a user interface specialist (for whatever reason) this is certainly a great book to get you started. The design and layout of the book, is fairly dull and boring. There are only very few black and white illustrations which do not add much to the overall impression. Even though that white space is important for increased readability, I think some of this space (20% of the book) should have been used for better and more illustrations.

I really found this book helpful in developing my understanding of User Interface design. Although it was written more for designing UI for software I found the examples and explanations VERY applicable to designing web sites. This book also keeps your interest, the author throws in quite a bit of humor. I HIGHLY recommend it!