Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules 1st Edition

by Jeff Johnson (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0123750303

ISBN-10: 012375030X

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Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Guidelines
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Early user interface (UI) practitioners were trained in cognitive psychology, from which UI design rules were based. But as the field evolves, designers enter the field from many disciplines. Practitioners today have enough experience in UI design that they have been exposed to design rules, but it is essential that they understand the psychology behind the rules in order to effectively apply them. In Designing with the Mind in Mind, Jeff Johnson, author of the best selling GUI Bloopers, provides designers with just enough background in perceptual and cognitive psychology that UI design guidelines make intuitive sense rather than being just a list of rules to follow.

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Editorial Reviews

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"Take fundamental principles of psychology. Illustrate. Combine with Fundamental Principles of Design. Stir gently until fully blended. Read daily until finished. Caution: The mixture is addictive" --Don Norman, Nielsen Norman group, Author of Design of Future Things.

"This book is a primer to understand the why of the larger human action principles at work―a sort of cognitive science for designers in a hurry. Above all, this is a book of profound insight into the human mind for practical people who want to get something done." --Stuart Card, Senior Research Fellow and the manager of the User Interface Research group at the Palo Alto Research Centerfrom the foreword

"If you want to know why design rules work, Jeff Johnson provides fresh insight into the psychological rationale for user-interface design rules that pervade discussions in the world of software product and service development." --Aaron Marcus, President, Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc.

"As anyone who has taken a course in human-computer interaction (HCI) will attest, cognitive science textbooks tend towards the drier end of the literary spectrum. The achievement of this book in making the material easily accessible is therefore nothing short of magnificent. It discusses the relevant scientific findings without any lack of scholarship, but always with an eye to how those findings can be put to practical use." --BCS, British Computer Society Online, November 2010

"Rather than simply presenting another list of rules, it discusses the cognitive psychology research findings which underpin the principles identified previously by the author and others. In other words, this is a book about people, and what we know about them as users of interactive systems." --BCS, The British Computer Society Online

"Anyone who designs or implements software user interfaces will benefit greatly from this book. Whether you create desktop software, websites, or mobile apps, this book will improve the quality of your work. Johnson makes the psychology and physiology understandable and seamlessly combines it with software engineering… Designing with the Mind in Mind is informative, fascinating, easy to read, and, most importantly, highly practical." --ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering

Review

The first practical, all-in-one source for practitioners on user interface design rules and why, when and how to apply them

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (June 3, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 200 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 012375030X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0123750303
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.13 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 0.5 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #959,863 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #423 in Human-Computer Interaction (Books)
- #436 in User Experience & Website Usability
- #1,061 in Web Design (Books)

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Adrian

Very good HCI book for beginners

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2018

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I was looking at the time when I bought this book to find a better way to connect to designers on my team, this book definitely allowed me to do that. Not only was I able to do that, I was able to understand their terminology and thinking a lot better. Highly recommend to software engineers looking to connect with their designers better!

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Amazon Customer

Nice introduction to foundations for software user interfaces.

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2012

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The book is a nice summary of how software user interfaces should relate to human mental strengths and weaknesses. It is occasionally a little obvious, as though psychologists are needed to tell us what everyone already knows. Consider the quote: "'automatic' is how cognitive psychologists refer to routine well-learned behavior." Hmm.

There is continual reference to evolution as being the explanation as to why the brain is the way it is. A theory that can be made to explain everything does not explain anything, and I found its inclusion to be distracting.

Later in the book the author has a chapter on automatic (well-learned) and controlled tasks. The first we can do without thinking, like riding a bike. There are also mixtures of the two. He lumps problem solving and calculation in the same category. They both require the same limited mental resources. The author makes the point that a user interface should not make us "solve problems". Examples include figuring out where we are in some process, or what we need to do next. I found this all to be very well done.

A later chapter addresses the problem of designing a system so that the user can efficiently go from problem solving to automatic use mode. It is based on the idea of a task: we learn best when the experience is task based. To do this we begin with task analysis. Part of this analysis seems quite similar to the application of use-cases and domain analysis in object-oriented design, and a reference could be useful.

At the end of the book the author discusses the importance of responsiveness, and relates it to certain constants associated with mental activity, which I found quite interesting.

As a stylistic note, the author switches back and forth between four different schemes for personal pronoun gender issues. This would seem to violate his own call for interface consistency.

In general, I found it to be a very nice book and would recommend it to someone wanting a nice overview of computer systems user interface issues.

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GARY SMITH

Interesting tidbits abound

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2011

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Jeff Johnson has worked for some of the biggies: XEROX, HP, and Sun and consulted for others including: AT&T, Fujitsu, Informix and Oracle. He has published numerous papers on human-computer interaction and is the author of several books on interface design and design mistakes for both software and web applications.

Designing with the Mind in Mind is a tidy little tome that is quite easy to read. Illustrations abound - hardly a page goes by without one. Most are in color.

Jeff simplifies the cognitive and perceptual science behind what we see and how our brain interprets the incoming flow of information. Topics include:

- Vision
- Use of visual structure
- Reading
- Color vision
- Attention span
- Recognition and recall
- Problem solving and calculation
- Timing

His introduction and appendix cite UI research and guidelines from 1976 through 2007 and stresses the similarities of the major points in each.

The book is explicitly targeted at us: s/w professionals who apply UI and IxD guidelines. A secondary audience is s/w development managers who need to understand the psychological basis of UI design so they can better understand and evaluate the work of those they manage.

I learned some interesting tidbits about how our eyes see and our minds work. His chart of time constants ranging from a millisecond to 100 seconds is worth pasting next to your workstation.

As the science of cognition continues to expand its understanding, Jeff's book represents a compact, up-to-date overview of how the cognitive sciences play a role in the designs we create.

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Raven Keybrook

This book opened up a new career for me.

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2013

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This book injected me with enthusiasm about this field, and made me start taking classes is it, as well as going to see Jeff Johnson live. It's so well written, it's so smart, it's so useful, it's the most useful non-fiction book I've ever read. I'm a web design consultant, so UI/UX were crucial. Way better than
Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions by Bill Scott and Theresa Neil, although that book has a few things that are helpful.
You should also check out his new book. You can buy a PDF from the publisher's website (Morgan & Claypool), or the physical book here: http://www.amazon.com/Conceptual-Models-Synthesis-Human-Centered-Informatics/dp/1608457494/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1364056528&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=conceptual+model+jeff+johnson

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You know everything about UI. Not really..... Read the book

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2011

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I am developing software for a long time and very few architects/developers focus on this area.

Who is this book for: I would say anybody who develops user interface but material is advanced and would benefit architects more than junior developers.

What do I like: Good examples, clarity and easy to follow text. After reading this I realized and immediately benefited in my day to day work.

One concrete example: I never paid attention to color blind folks in my design because I never paid attention to it. I had this view of if I can see so can others but I was dead wrong. Roughly 8-10% (do not quote me) men are color blind and that is a high number. God/Nature made sure that women who apparently loves colors so much are less vulnerable to the color blindness....

Anyhow, I enjoyed this book very much and it gave me a new perspective. After this I read other books like 'UI bloopers', "Don't make me think" etc. and all these books are great.

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Top reviews from other countries

Benedict Carey

Great for waking the brain up after a dull design meeting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 24, 2012

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I've been interested in what Jeff Johnson has to say since reading GUI Bloopers years ago. This is a very different book, much more theoretical and scientific in approach.

Unfortunately Jeff seems to suffer from his books being a bit mis-described and mis-sold, the rather over-excitable description above suggests the book is for everyone from the cognitive psychologist to the milkman's gran ... it isn't, in the intro Jeff is quite clear it's for a subset of the development community, those of us involved in various aspects of designing and assembling user interfaces, but not the HCI professional, who should be beyond this stuff.

In terms of level, I think the content was taking me a little beyond what I covered (and mostly forgot since) on an HCI module in an engineering degree. So if you have a degree focussed on usability, or a masters in software, this is probably beneath you now.

That isn't to say it is inaccessible to others, I think you'll understand and benefit from it even if you don't code for a living, you just need to be interested in human behaviour and why we respond in certain ways to certain stimuli. The book steps through the various aspects of cognitive psychology that are relevant to humans interacting with devices, breaks them down into laymans terms and shows how they apply to a user interface. He uses a combination of real world, software and web examples to illustrate the principles. It actually ends up quite an exciting and engaging read. I got through it in a week, which is unusual for me.

I think Jeff has made a real effort to use a good spread of examples across different sectors, different types of interface and environment. Unlike many other books it doesn't suffer from being too web-specific, or too US-specific, although I will say it didn't render too well on a Kindle (tables truncated, colours, etc!). Sometimes you might disagree with the examples, or feel they are a bit quirky, but I still felt I understood the message, and pondering on the appropriateness of, say, chasing a rabbit for dinner as a metaphor for resizing a window is probably a good exercise in processing the subject matter.

The book refers you elsewhere for full usability guidelines, design guides etc. This is about why those lists are what they are, and thus will help you choose and apply (or reject) the rules for your domain. It also doesn't deal with "selling" usability to a client within a team, I find the biggest problem is everyone (I mean everyone) thinks they can design an interface and trying to steer managers and analysts away from crashingly naive errors is hard work (programmers, at least, tend to know they have a peculiar outlook). I guess that would be a different book, but I did feel I wanted a little more.

My feeling is 4.5 stars, so I'll be generous and round it up.

4 people found this helpful

Jodi W

Very good all-round introduction to UI design

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2012

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I'm a pro web developer (technical), having worked on sites for quite a well known games company. I used this to help me understand more about why the excellent design team at that company made certain decisions about page design. I wouldn't say this book is exhaustive, hence 4 stars - but in a way you never can be, it's such a fast developing area. The design team I worked with was way beyond this book. But it did at least give me some ground rules and decisions in web design that they didn't even realize they made any more.
I certainly pitch this at beginner to intermediate. The glossy pages and typeset are nice to read, and it's not an overlarge tome like some computer books. Follow it and you will improve the design of your sites, and along the way know why you're making those changes.
Of note, it cites the studies where the bits of information it talks about came from. Whilst it is good to know that this book is thoroughly based in fact, I didn't personally see a need to know up front about them, in an index would've been fine. This makes me wonder if the psychology/HCI Comp Sci. crowd might get more out of it because they get citations really easily!

Sara Silva

An easy, pleasant read. Problem in proximity principle.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2016

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Simple and easy to read, very clear. I use it for my HCI class. It is not meant for strongly computer oriented students, as it addresses the subject more from a psychological / biological point of view.

I have detected a problem, though: to illustrate the Gestalt principle of proximity the author should not have used different colors, but only the spacing to suggest the two groups of objects. It's not exactly wrong, but it's a bit misleading.

Sancha de Burca

Understanding the quirks of interface users

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2014

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Very clear and useful in that it describes the psychology of the user before suggesting how the designer can cater to this. Useful for web designers and app builders as well as informative to those engaged in the wider business of design. It also made me understand myself as an impatient user!

@northresearch

Excellent read for the non-designer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2014

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As a conversion optimisation specialist this is a great read as I am not a web page designer, but need to have an understanding of the psychology of design. This is a very well written and easy to ready book that covers a wide range of issues related to design. Also a great book for generating ideas to test on websites.

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