About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design (Paperback)

by Alan Cooper (Author) "This book has a simple premise: If achieving the user's goals is the basis of our user interface design, then the user will be satisfied..." (more)
Key Phrases: cursor hinting, ejector seat levers, pedagogic vector, File Manager, Program Manager, Microsoft Word (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
An excellent book for anyone who wants to understand why so much software is so poorly designed -- and an even better book for anyone who wants to DO something about the problem. Must reading (and doing!) for programmers of any level.

Review
Alan Cooper is the "Miss Manners" of software design...My advice is to buy two copies -- autograph the second, and send it to an engineer at Microsoft. -- Paul Saffo, Director, Institute for the Future

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Product Details

• Paperback: 580 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (August 11, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568843224
• ISBN-13: 978-1568843223
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #682,424 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Computer-Related Book I've Ever Read, April 10, 2000

By	P. Thompson (Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book changed my life. No kidding. Before I discovered this book, I thought I was a pretty decent GUI programmer, but in retrospect, I really had no concept of usability. What I was doing was slapping an interface on top of my code. This book will change the way you design & write software, and even how you use software yourself. And at least in my case, it even changed the way I look at everyday life. I find myself asking why things were designed the way they were, and realizing how much better things could work if they were re-designed with usability in mind.

Cooper mainly looks at the Windows GUI in this book, explaining the basic elements of the GUI, and why they do or do not work well. And he gives suggestions as to how things could be done better.

And he gives some interesting reasons why today's developers design software the way they do.

I highly recommend this book to every developer who has to design/code GUIs. I've actually read through it twice. I can't say that about any other computer-related book I've ever read.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars thought-provoking, but irritating, November 13, 2001

By	Bob Carpenter (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Alan Cooper needs an editor as badly as the builders of GUIs need a UI designer. This book reads like a hastily-assembled series of email flames.

In between the flaming rants, there are a few positive contributions. Unfortunately, they're typically presented in an oddly half baked way, with the metaphors being drawn much more sharply than the UI recommendations. Here are some examples from page 23, which I flipped to at random: "assembling bicycles on Christmas Eve was a cakewalk compared to getting _The Lion King_ CD ROM to work". Yes, we all know installation is hard. But what do we do about it? "Either the software industry will regulate itself like doctors and architects do, or the government will regulate it like hairdressers and taxi-drivers". Hmm. Still don't see how this relates to GUI design? "If carpenters designed houses, they would certainly be easier or more interesting to build, but not necessarily better to live in". Typical of his focus on getting design out of the programmer's hands. "It's as though the scaffolding is so labor-intensive that the urge to incorporate it into the finished house is irresistible". He goes on to discourage designers from using anything other than pencil and paper and to discourage prototyping because it'll stick. (You'll find much more insight on software engineering in toto in Hunt and Thomas's "The Pragmatic Programmer" or Beck's "Extreme Programming".

Just because Cooper's unfocused and condescending doesn't mean he's always wrong. Three topics, in particular, stuck with me: no dialog boxes, save is the default, and soverign apps. Reading this book caused me to completely rethink the current app I was designing.

It's clear that Cooper spends most of his time at the computer doing word processing. Almost all of the negative examples (I don't recall any positive ones) are drawn from Microsoft products, primarily Win95 itself and Word.

I found Johnson's book "GUI Bloopers" to be far more insightful on actually designing, laying out and testing GUIs. Johnson's book is refreshingly polite, case-study oriented and thoughtful.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not worth its reputation, July 16, 2002

By	David C. Veeneman (Lincolnshire, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'd heard about this book for years. Alan Cooper is widely regarded as the guru of interface design. After reading this book, I wonder why.

For one thing, he contradicts himself--a lot. On the one hand he complains that software tends to mimic the physical artifacts--for example, calendars are laid out on one-month grids. According to Cooper, this is a serious problem-- we are restricting a computerized calendar based on the limitations of the printed page. We should exploit the power of the PC. Then, not more than thirty pages later, he complains that computer file systems are deficient because they aren't centered around 'documents', which users know and love. We should restrict our file systems based on the limitations of the printed page. Be either fish or fowl; don't try to have it both ways.

I was very disappointed by this book. I expected insight, but what I got was Alan Cooper bitching about Windows. I knew what was wrong with Windows before I read the book. What I wanted was guidance on how to best interact with the user. I got Cooper's pet theories, most of which strike me as just plain silly.

Another reader described the book as "incredibly arrogant". I'd have to agree. Save your money; I doubt this book would help you create better user interfaces.