Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design
by: Jenifer Tidwell
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Designing a good interface isn't easy. Users demand software that is well-behaved, good-looking, and easy to use. Your clients or managers demand originality and a short time to market. Your UI technology -- web applications, desktop software, even mobile devices -- may give you the tools you need, but little guidance on how to use them well.
UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence.
"Designing Interfaces" captures those best practices as design patterns -- solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand. Each pattern contains practical advice that you can put to use immediately, plus a variety of examples illustrated in full color. You'll get recommendations, design alternatives, and warnings on when not to use them.
Each chapter's introduction describes key design concepts that are often misunderstood, such as affordances, visual hierarchy, navigational distance, and the use of color. These give you a deeper understanding of why the patterns work, and how to apply them with more insight.
A book can't design an interface for you -- no foolproof design process is given here -- but "Designing Interfaces" does give you concrete ideas that you can mix and recombine as you see fit. Experienced designers can use it as a sourcebook of ideas. Novice designers will find a roadmap to the world of interface and interaction design, with enough guidance to start using these patterns immediately.
Designing a good interface isn't easy. Users demand software that is well-behaved, good-looking, and easy to use. Your clients or managers demand originality and a short time to market. Your UI technology -- web applications, desktop software, even mobile devices -- may give you the tools you need, but little guidance on how to use them well.
UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence.
"Designing Interfaces" captures those best practices as design patterns -- solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand. Each pattern contains practical advice that you can put to use immediately, plus a variety of examples illustrated in full color. You'll get recommendations, design alternatives, and warnings on when not to use them.
Each chapter's introduction describes key design concepts that are often misunderstood, such as affordances, visual hierarchy, navigational distance, and the use of color. These give you a deeper understanding of why the patterns work, and how to apply them with more insight.
A book can't design an interface for you -- no foolproof design process is given here -- but "Designing Interfaces" does give you concrete ideas that you can mix and recombine as you see fit. Experienced designers can use it as a sourcebook of ideas. Novice designers will find a roadmap to the world of interface and interaction design, with enough guidance to start using these patterns immediately.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- Visual examples for designing for Information Interchange
This book is by far the best book that does for the User Interface world of computing what Edward R. Tufte's series of books does for the writer's of technical reports and their needs to present and represent many varied types of data and data interaction. Need to show the effects of miles marched, time required to cover terrain, and temperature on Napoleon's armies march on Moscow and show the number of troops he has left alive at every point along the journey? Tufte shows how the French engineer ... Read More
Rating: - Excellent
Nutshell review - If you design interfaces for any software project you should read this book. It covers all the bases, is extensive, comprehensive, well written and easy to use as a resource or refresher in interface design techniques.
Rating: - A staple for your design library
Designing Interfaces catalogs UI design patterns in use and provides guidance in using them, with plenty of examples. It takes a consistent approach to describing each pattern: What it is, when to use it, why to use it and how to use it. The book is both a good overview and a reference. If UI design is an area of interest to you, then read through this book and then keep it available as a reference.
Rating: 
- Great interface component reference
For many years now, I have been coding web sites and applications. Through all that time, nothing has ever been as tough for me as coming up with a design that I am truly happy with. Attempting to create an optimized and stable algorithm or coming up with the answer to a problem that requires non-conventional coding practices; these are always challenges, but ones that are most often eventually solved. Creating that mythical eye catching never-been-done-before layout is something that I have attempted ... Read More
Rating: - More Practical Concepts, Less Psychology
While I don't own a physical copy of this book, I had used an electronic form of it in the course of my studies.
I will first forewarn those who are interested in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that this text does not heavily focus on the science of Psychological principles such as Gestalt Perception, nor does it concern itself with techniques/methodologies such as Threading and Model-View-Controller (MVC) to improve the performance of programs. The focus of this text falls strictly on the ... Read More
- Visual examples for designing for Information InterchangeThis book is by far the best book that does for the User Interface world of computing what Edward R. Tufte's series of books does for the writer's of technical reports and their needs to present and represent many varied types of data and data interaction. Need to show the effects of miles marched, time required to cover terrain, and temperature on Napoleon's armies march on Moscow and show the number of troops he has left alive at every point along the journey? Tufte shows how the French engineer ... Read More
- ExcellentNutshell review - If you design interfaces for any software project you should read this book. It covers all the bases, is extensive, comprehensive, well written and easy to use as a resource or refresher in interface design techniques.
- A staple for your design libraryDesigning Interfaces catalogs UI design patterns in use and provides guidance in using them, with plenty of examples. It takes a consistent approach to describing each pattern: What it is, when to use it, why to use it and how to use it. The book is both a good overview and a reference. If UI design is an area of interest to you, then read through this book and then keep it available as a reference.
- Great interface component referenceFor many years now, I have been coding web sites and applications. Through all that time, nothing has ever been as tough for me as coming up with a design that I am truly happy with. Attempting to create an optimized and stable algorithm or coming up with the answer to a problem that requires non-conventional coding practices; these are always challenges, but ones that are most often eventually solved. Creating that mythical eye catching never-been-done-before layout is something that I have attempted ... Read More
- More Practical Concepts, Less PsychologyWhile I don't own a physical copy of this book, I had used an electronic form of it in the course of my studies.
I will first forewarn those who are interested in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that this text does not heavily focus on the science of Psychological principles such as Gestalt Perception, nor does it concern itself with techniques/methodologies such as Threading and Model-View-Controller (MVC) to improve the performance of programs. The focus of this text falls strictly on the ... Read More
