Designing the User Interface


Book Description

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. The much-anticipated fifth edition of Designing the User Interface provides a comprehensive, authoritative introduction to the dynamic field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Students and professionals learn practical principles and guidelines needed to develop high quality interface designs—ones that users can understand, predict, and control. It covers theoretical foundations, and design processes such as expert reviews and usability testing. Numerous examples of direct manipulation, menu selection, and form fill-in give readers an understanding of excellence in design The new edition provides updates on current HCI topics with balanced emphasis on mobile devices, Web, and desktop platforms. It addresses the profound changes brought by user-generated content of text, photo, music, and video and the raised expectations for compelling user experiences. Provides a broad survey of designing, implementing, managing, maintaining, training, and refining the user interface of interactive systems. Describes practical techniques and research-supported design guidelines for effective interface designs Covers both professional applications (e.g. CAD/CAM, air traffic control) and consumer examples (e.g. web services, e-government, mobile devices, cell phones, digital cameras, games, MP3 players) Delivers informative introductions to development methodologies, evaluation techniques, and user-interface building tools. Supported by an extensive array of current examples and figures illustrating good design principles and practices. Includes dynamic, full-color presentation throughout. Guides students who might be starting their first HCI design project Accompanied by a Companion Website with additional practice opportunities and informational resources for both students and professors.




Designing with the Mind in Mind


Book Description

In this completely updated and revised edition of Designing with the Mind in Mind, Jeff Johnson provides you with just enough background in perceptual and cognitive psychology that user interface (UI) design guidelines make intuitive sense rather than being just a list or rules to follow. Early UI practitioners were trained in cognitive psychology, and developed UI design rules based on it. But as the field has evolved since the first edition of this book, 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 this new edition, you'll find new chapters on human choice and decision making, hand-eye coordination and attention, as well as new examples, figures, and explanations throughout. - Provides an essential source for user interface design rules and how, when, and why to apply them - Arms designers with the science behind each design rule, allowing them to make informed decisions in projects, and to explain those decisions to others - Equips readers with the knowledge to make educated tradeoffs between competing rules, project deadlines, and budget pressures - Completely updated and revised, including additional coverage on human choice and decision making, hand-eye coordination and attention, and new mobile and touch-screen examples throughout




The Essential Guide to User Interface Design


Book Description

Well-designed graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for business systems can greatly increase user productivity, but designing them can be difficult and time consuming. This book walks developers through the basics of good interface design, using real-world examples from systems that are proven successes. Galitz is an internationally recognized consultant, author, and instructor with many years of experience with information systems and user interface design. Written especially for developers who may be designing user interfaces for the first time, but also extremely useful for any developer involved in GUI or Web site design. Revised to reflect the profound enhancements in interface design, specifically how Web page design has revolutionized interface design. New information covers a variety of platforms, both traditional and Web-based.




Laws of UX


Book Description

An understanding of psychology—specifically the psychology behind how users behave and interact with digital interfaces—is perhaps the single most valuable nondesign skill a designer can have. The most elegant design can fail if it forces users to conform to the design rather than working within the "blueprint" of how humans perceive and process the world around them. This practical guide explains how you can apply key principles in psychology to build products and experiences that are more intuitive and human-centered. Author Jon Yablonski deconstructs familiar apps and experiences to provide clear examples of how UX designers can build experiences that adapt to how users perceive and process digital interfaces. You’ll learn: How aesthetically pleasing design creates positive responses The principles from psychology most useful for designers How these psychology principles relate to UX heuristics Predictive models including Fitts’s law, Jakob’s law, and Hick’s law Ethical implications of using psychology in design A framework for applying these principles




The Usability Engineering Lifecycle


Book Description

This text is about achieving usability in product user interface design through a process called Usability Engineering. The techniques presented include not only UI requirements analysis, but also organizational and managerial strategies.




User Interface Design for Programmers


Book Description

Most programmers' fear of user interface (UI) programming comes from their fear of doing UI design. They think that UI design is like graphic design—the mysterious process by which creative, latte-drinking, all-black-wearing people produce cool-looking, artistic pieces. Most programmers see themselves as analytic, logical thinkers instead—strong at reasoning, weak on artistic judgment, and incapable of doing UI design. In this brilliantly readable book, author Joel Spolsky proposes simple, logical rules that can be applied without any artistic talent to improve any user interface, from traditional GUI applications to websites to consumer electronics. Spolsky's primary axiom, the importance of bringing the program model in line with the user model, is both rational and simple. In a fun and entertaining way, Spolky makes user interface design easy for programmers to grasp. After reading User Interface Design for Programmers, you'll know how to design interfaces with the user in mind. You'll learn the important principles that underlie all good UI design, and you'll learn how to perform usability testing that works.




The UX Book


Book Description

The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience aims to help readers learn how to create and refine interaction designs that ensure a quality user experience (UX). The book seeks to expand the concept of traditional usability to a broader notion of user experience; to provide a hands-on, practical guide to best practices and established principles in a UX lifecycle; and to describe a pragmatic process for managing the overall development effort. The book provides an iterative and evaluation-centered UX lifecycle template, called the Wheel, for interaction design. Key concepts discussed include contextual inquiry and analysis; extracting interaction design requirements; constructing design-informing models; design production; UX goals, metrics, and targets; prototyping; UX evaluation; the interaction cycle and the user action framework; and UX design guidelines. This book will be useful to anyone interested in learning more about creating interaction designs to ensure a quality user experience. These include interaction designers, graphic designers, usability analysts, software engineers, programmers, systems analysts, software quality-assurance specialists, human factors engineers, cognitive psychologists, cosmic psychics, trainers, technical writers, documentation specialists, marketing personnel, and project managers. - A very broad approach to user experience through its components—usability, usefulness, and emotional impact with special attention to lightweight methods such as rapid UX evaluation techniques and an agile UX development process - Universal applicability of processes, principles, and guidelines—not just for GUIs and the Web, but for all kinds of interaction and devices: embodied interaction, mobile devices, ATMs, refrigerators, and elevator controls, and even highway signage - Extensive design guidelines applied in the context of the various kinds of affordances necessary to support all aspects of interaction - Real-world stories and contributions from accomplished UX practitioners - A practical guide to best practices and established principles in UX - A lifecycle template that can be instantiated and tailored to a given project, for a given type of system development, on a given budget




Voice User Interface Design


Book Description

This book is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to voice user interface (VUI) design. The VUI is perhaps the most critical factor in the success of any automated speech recognition (ASR) system, determining whether the user experience will be satisfying or frustrating, or even whether the customer will remain one. This book describes a practical methodology for creating an effective VUI design. The methodology is scientifically based on principles in linguistics, psychology, and language technology, and is illustrated here by examples drawn from the authors' work at Nuance Communications, the market leader in ASR development and deployment. The book begins with an overview of VUI design issues and a description of the technology. The authors then introduce the major phases of their methodology. They first show how to specify requirements and make high-level design decisions during the definition phase. They next cover, in great detail, the design phase, with clear explanations and demonstrations of each design principle and its real-world applications. Finally, they examine problems unique to VUI design in system development, testing, and tuning. Key principles are illustrated with a running sample application. A companion Web site provides audio clips for each example: www.VUIDesign.org The cover photograph depicts the first ASR system, Radio Rex: a toy dog who sits in his house until the sound of his name calls him out. Produced in 1911, Rex was among the few commercial successes in earlier days of speech recognition. Voice User Interface Design reveals the design principles and practices that produce commercial success in an era when effective ASRs are not toys but competitive necessities.




Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines


Book Description

This book provides authoritative information on the theory behind the Macintosh 'look and feel' and the practice of using individual interface components. It includes many examples of good design and explains why one implementation is superior to another. Anyone designing or creating a product for Macintosh computers needs to understand the information in this book.