GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 584 pages
• Published by: Morgan Kaufmann
• Edition: 1st Edition March 17, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1558605827
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1558605824
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 2.2 pounds

Reader Reviews
Despite the title, the "Do's" section of this book is where the meat lies. The "bloopers" are used as lead-ins on how to design interfaces with a focus on usability. If you're even contemplating designing anything from a web page to an installation shield, you should read this book. Customers should read this book, and managers should read this book. The book's really not aimed at programmers or graphic designers, but they'll find it plenty interesting, especially since programmers and graphic designers often design GUIs. Johnson gives us a widget-by-widget tour of labels, text fields, buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, and overall layout management. But he doesn't stop there. The notion of usability also extends into issues like consistency. Even more important is responsiveness, the chapter on which is worth the price of the book alone. What makes this book so enjoyable is the multitude of case studies. These aren't meant to make you laugh out loud like Lucille-Ball-botching-her-line bloopers, but rather to get you to concentrate on the bigger picture of usability. The longer case studies of Johnson's experience as a consultant on a set-top-box design project and a game interface project are interesting if you're thinking about working with or becoming an interface design consultant yourself. Another benefit of the book is that it takes you through common and common sensical design strategies starting from needs analysis to paper prototyping to early focus group testing and refinement. The references to deeper studies in many of these areas are plentiful. This book is more focused on GUIs than books like Ben Schneiderman's _Designing the User Interface_, which is a useful, thoughtful survey, but reads like a Ph.D. thesis compared to _GUI Bloopers_. Johnson is also focused on usability, in contrast to something like the _Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines_, which focuses exclusively on graphical layout issues, such as how many pixels to leave around 9 point sans serif font in a button and what color scheme to use for highlighted icons. One final note: Johnson ate his own dog food and usability tested his book! Comment | | (Report this)