Web Anatomy: Interaction Design Frameworks that Work [Paperback]

Robert Hoekman (Author), Jared Spool (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0321635027 | ISBN-13: 978-0321635020 | Edition: 1

At the start of every web design project, the ongoing struggles reappear. We want to design highly usable and self-evident applications, but we also want to devise innovative, compelling, and exciting interactions that make waves in the market. Projects are more sophisticated than ever, but we have fewer resources with which to complete them. Requirements are fuzzy at best, but we’re expected to have everything done yesterday.

What we need is a reuse strategy, coupled with a pathway to innovation. Patterns are part of the game. Components take us further. In Web Anatomy: Interaction Design Frameworks That Work, user experience experts Hoekman and Spool introduce “interaction design frameworks”, the third and final piece of what they call “The Reuse Trinity”, and resolve these issues once and for all. Frameworks are sets of design patterns and other elements that comprise entire systems, and in this game-changing book, Hoekman and Spool show you how to identify, document, share, use, and reap the benefits of frameworks. They also dive deep into several major frameworks to reveal how the psychology behind these standards leads not only to effective designs, but can also serve as the basis for cutting-edge innovations and superior user experiences.

Web Anatomy delivers:

• A complete guide to using interaction design frameworks

• An examination of the psychology behind major frameworks

• A thorough look at how frameworks will change the way you work for the better

Citing examples from both the successful and not-so-successful, the authors break down the elements that comprise several common interactive web systems, discuss implementation considerations, offer examples of innovations based on these standards, reveal how frameworks work hand in hand with patterns and components, and show you how to integrate frameworks into your process.

Read Web Anatomy now. Benefit from it for years to come.

Jared Spool is a world-renowned design researcher and the founder of UIE.com. Robert Hoekman, Jr. is a veteran user experience specialist and the author of Designing the Obvious and Designing the Moment.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Hoekman, Jr, is a passionate and outspoken user experience specialist and a prolific writer who has written dozens of articles and has worked with Seth Godin (Squidoo), Adobe, Automattic, United Airlines, DoTheRightThing.com, and countless others.

He also gives in-house training sessions and has spoken at industry events all over the world, including An Event Apart, Web App Summit, SXSW, Future of Web Design, and many others.

Robert is the author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious and its follow-up, Designing the Moment. His newest book, Web Anatomy, was coauthored by Jared Spool.

Learn more about Robert at rhjr.net. He is "rhjr" on Twitter.

Jared Spool has more than 15 years of experience conducting usability evaluations on a variety of products, and is an expert in low-fidelity prototyping techniques. As a recognized authority on user interface design and human factors in computing, Jared is on the faculty of the Tufts University Gordon Institute and teaches seminars on product usability.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 1 edition (December 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321635027
• ISBN-13: 978-0321635020
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #491,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on how to make websites that work for visitors so far, May 21, 2010

By 

Ari Davidow "KlezmerShack" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Web Anatomy: Interaction Design Frameworks that Work (Paperback)

This is the best website Design Pattern book I have read so far. The book is a spare, heavily illustrated 200 pages long--not the usual bulked tome 3-4 times longer. In that space, Hoekman and Spool introduce us to Frameworks, which take advantage of Design Patterns, which will be realized with Components local to the organization and along the way they blow apart dozens of cherished misconceptions, replaced by tested, researched ideas--"this is what we've found, and this is what we actually know." They then provide some excellent Framework examples and discussion to demonstrate, including two of the messiest, most often down horribly frameworks of all: "sign up" and "search."

For the latter, the text illuminates as so far no other article or book on the subject has done, how search and browse intertwine, and without saying so explicitly, focus attention on the concept of "findability," or closer to the author's terms, "how people best find and follow a scent of information." Backing all of this up is a decade of research at UIE, so that when findings seem contrary to what one might expect, or might have heard elsewhere, they can report, "this isn't what we thought we'd find when we first did user testing...."

Some books can be read comfortably in an easy chair. Some can be read in an easy chair if you have good bookmark slips or don't mind bending pages and writing in the margins. This is one where I needed my computer nearby so that I could supplement my notes with the occasional email to staff suggesting that we rethink this or that and by the way, what did they think of making this change to that template?

Among the notes I made while reading were the addition of this book to my own course on Content Management and several class notes edits to take advantage of it.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great addition to some of the other great UX/IxD books to come out this year, December 17, 2009

By 

Ryan L. Winzenburg "UX Designer" (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Web Anatomy: Interaction Design Frameworks that Work (Paperback)

This book is fantastic in the context of a couple other books in my user experience library. If you've read Kim Goodwin's Designing for the Digital Age and/or Modular Web Design by the folks at Eight Shapes this is a fantastic supplementary book. You will get a ton of value out of this book if you download the design templates at [...] and use them as a starting point for your own component library.

I would recommend this book to anyone under the User Experience canopy. This book if full of excellent tips to save you time as well as tested user centered design patterns for pain-free design decision making.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Introduction to Interaction Design Patterns, October 3, 2010

By 

Eric Marden "Developer, Music Maker, Photo Ta... (Chicago) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Web Anatomy: Interaction Design Frameworks that Work (Paperback)

It seems that design patterns are all the rage these days, and for good reason. Breaking larger problems into smaller ones and then applying tried and true solutions to those problems has been a mainstay of serious software development for many years. Web Anatomy brings this thinking to Interaction Design and User Experience, and wraps up a collection of design patterns and components into larger experience 'frameworks' that can be applied to a slew of different kinds of sites. I found the text to be engaging and well thought out, and appreciated that the authors' UX theories were backed by actual user testing and related research. You'll walk away from this book with a much deeper appreciation of the psychology behind common design patterns and will begin to seek to understand the user's context before your next project. It is for these reasons alone that I can emphatically recommend this book.