Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Models and Methods of Usage-Centered Design (ACM Press) (Hardcover)

by Larry L. Constantine (Author), Lucy A. D. Lockwood (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
For anyone who designs applications or Web pages professionally, Software for Use provides an appealingly written guide to user interface design. This book delivers many valuable insights on improving interfaces for both desktop applications and Web sites.

A software design process is first presented that's centered on usability (with terms like "user roles," "use cases," and "interaction contexts"). Early sections have much to say about inadequate interfaces (using a number of Windows examples) and how to improve them. The book presents an argument for creating innovative and intuitable interfaces (often by rethinking time-honored Windows conventions).

The most provocative material here is the coverage of the Internet--the book argues that many Web sites sacrifice usability for visual razzle-dazzle, and it offers ways to organize Web sites for better usability. (A section on embedded devices looks at UI issues for these systems too.) A full case study of a user interface design for a corporate address book is included.

Software for Use makes a good case that there is room for improvement in today's user interfaces. This book is sure to be a valuable resource for anyone serious about improving the user's experience of software or Web sites. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Design processes; help systems and error messages; and interface creation for novice, intermediate, and advanced users.

Product Description
In the quest for quality, software developers have long focused on
improving the internal architecture of their products. Larry L.
Constantine--who originally created structured design to effect such
improvement--now joins with well-known consultant Lucy A. D.
Lockwood to turn the focus of software development to the external
architecture. In this book, they present the models and methods of a
revolutionary approach to software that will help programmers deliver
more usable software--software that will enable users to accomplish
their tasks with greater ease and efficiency.

Recognizing usability as the key to successful software, Constantine and
Lockwood provide concrete tools and techniques that programmers can
employ to meet that end. Much more than just another set of rules for
good user-interface design, this book guides readers through a systematic
software-development process. This process, called usage-centered
design, weaves together two major threads in software-development
methods: use cases (also used with UML) and essential modeling. With
numerous examples and case studies of both conventional and specialized
software applications, the authors illustrate what has been shown in
practice to work and what has proved to be of greatest practical value.

Highlights

Presents a streamlined process for developing highly usable software
Describes practical methods and models successfully implemented in industry
Complements modern development practices, including the Unified Method and other object-oriented software engineering approaches

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (April 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201924781
• ISBN-13: 978-0201924787
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,931 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for anyone involved with user interfaces, January 8, 2000

By A Customer

I very much enjoyed Software for Use. When I got the book, I read it from cover to cover. Now, six months later, I still turn to it regularly as I develop use cases for our application - especially when I'm working on the user interface for each use case.

You might expect that anything from Larry Constantine would be terrific and again he - this time with equally adept co-author Lucy Lockwood - hasn't let us down. SfU (as it seems to be called in the chat groups) addresses one of the most under-addressed issues in our industry: Why is so much potentially useful software in fact useless because of its appalling user interfaces?

There are lots of valuable topics in this book. But probably the most valuable thing that I got from the book was a methodical approach to developing user interfaces, through the user role maps, task models, essential use cases, use case narrative, tools and materials and ... well, perhaps you should read the book!

If you're in the mood for some edutainment (i.e. cheap laughs while learning something handy), read the section on Web wisdom. There you'll find some wonderfully silly interface designs to avoid on your next e-commerce project.

Bottom line: I'll bet this book's on the way to becoming a classic. It's a "must read" for every software developer involved in any way with software that's meant to be used. And if you're actually charged with developing user interfaces, I'd say it's a "must own".

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Software for Use book is already a classic., June 26, 1999

By	Ivar Jacobson ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews

Software for Use by Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood is the top software book I have read in the last three years. It is a book that is as new as tomorrow, but it builds on decades of research and experience in user-interface design. Most people develop user interfaces by intuition, trying an approach and modifying it until no strong objections are breaking through. Some people call this approach "hacking". Software for Use describes a systematic approach to the design of user interfaces. It starts from the user, identifying the different user roles. For each user all use cases are identified and described. Initially the abstraction level is high, focusing on the essential use cases. Eventually the approach achieves a physical user interface . All the work to get there takes place very naturally. The authors make this work very concrete.

Knowing that in many application areas, such as web-design or consumer electronics, the effort in designing the user interface is more than 50% of the work in developing applications, this is a book that I highly recommend every software developer and their managers to read. The Software for Use book is already a classic.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I bought a copy for each person on my team!, May 27, 1999

By A Customer

I've been an object-oriented bigot since the late eighties when I first stumbled on Betrand Meyer's "Old Testament" entitled: "Object Oriented Software Construction". Since then I have been on a continual methodology quest, picking and choosing what works from each methodology. When I finally came accross Larry's book it felt like coming home. He has doen an amazing job of amalgamating all the things that in my experience work. How many times have I argued with engineers about user interface design! How many times have they told me that they know better, and oh by the way, look at this cool feature we added (hit shift F6 and it does this...) This is the best book I have found so far when it comes to usage-centered design. I was lucky enough to be at the start of a new project and bought a copy of the book for every team member! This book has become our baseline and the quality of our software will reflect it. If you wan't to build better user interfaces you should buy this book!