My bookshelf is full of HCI texts. Some are great, some not so great. This is one of the greats. That's why I've been using the first edition for my Georgia Tech College of Computing undergraduate HCI class for the past four years and will move on to using this second edition as soon as it is ‘hot off the press’.
I like this text because it emphasizes the process of user interface design rather than the artifacts and technology of UI design. It is process that I believe is the most important part of UI design, and the hardest for technology-oriented students to appreciate.
Importantly, the process discussion does not just say ‘first do this, then do that, next do such and such.’ Yes, the text of necessity prescribes, but more importantly, it also describes, with lots of examples and for-instances to help the reader fully understand and appreciate the prescription.
The prescription is right on, and can be boiled down to Hansen's classic admonition ‘know thy user’ (Hansen 1971)1 followed by ‘consider alternatives,’ ‘prototype early, prototype often’ and ‘test early, test often’—or, as some would say, ‘fail early, fail often’, since there will surely be some failures in the testing.
When I first started teaching a full semester-long HCI course to computer science students about thirty years ago, I spent much more time than now on details of interaction devices and interaction techniques and software structures. That was at a time when GUIs were just becoming popular, and students had limited experience and exposure to their concepts, capabilities, and underlying software architectures. While I did preach ‘know thy user,’ task analysis etc., I did not spend enough time helping students really understand how to do it, so their projects were often too technology-centric rather than user-centric.
Over time, my teaching shifted more and more away from technology and more and more toward process. This is much easier than thirty years ago, because unlike then, today virtually every student has experience not just with GUIs but with lots of off-the-desktop UIs: cell phones, PDAs, VCRs and DVDs, phone-based voice response systems, home appliances, car navigation systems, and many more. So students are generally familiar with what is possible in the UI. Chapter 6 of the book gives a nice overview of contemporary trends in UI design (as well as a bit of history) without getting into unnecessary details of how the technology works. On the other hand, students, both then and now, are mostly clueless when it comes to being able to design a good UI.
Most teachers have discovered, as have I, that the best way to teach the UI design process and design itself is to have students working in teams actually go through the design process from start to finish. If the teams can be interdisciplinary (such as from computing, psychology, design, architecture, engineering, media studies), then they can learn a lot from one another—so much the better. In the course my Georgia Tech colleagues and I teach, the teams do a four-phase project, of 1) task analysis and user definition, 2) sketch out three alternative designs, 3) based on feedback from the class, the TA, and the instructor, select and prototype one design, and 4) define and carry out usability tests on the prototype. Students invariably (some sooner than others) get past the stage of blaming dumb users instead of acknowledging flaws in their design, and go on to develop an appreciation for the complexity of design decision-making. They learn that users are not like themselves, and that not all users are alike. Most are humbled by the experience.
This text is wonderfully suited for use with such a project-oriented course! But that's not the only reason I like the text.
The Chapter 2 discussion of understanding the design space, conceptualizing the design space, and accompanying theories, models and frameworks is tremendously important for students to ‘get’ early on in their studies. The basic goal is to start thinking about big-picture concepts and ideas in the problem space—to develop what I have called for many years the Conceptual Design. This necessarily is the starting point for actually doing a design. Students generally have trouble appreciating the importance of thinking through different conceptual design approaches before getting into the specifics of screen designs, menu structures, etc. Understanding that there might be several conceptual designs does not come easily.
The Chapter 4 discussion of design for collaboration and communication introduces students to a set of concerns that are crucial to one of the fastest-growing and probably the most prevalent uses of computers—to communicate with others. This goes way beyond the usual UI design guidelines and is important background for designers of such systems.
Similarly, Chapter 5 on affective aspects addresses a set of UI design concerns in a way that, to my knowledge, are not discussed in any other general UI design text. Recognizing the emotions that users might feel while using an interface—frustration, anger, happiness, satisfaction, etc.—and then understanding how to create positive feelings and avoid negative feelings—is a fruitful way to bring to the table not just the usual user interface guidelines but an important way of thinking about UI design.
A nice reorganization from the first edition is that all of the data collection and analysis material is now concentrated in Chapters 7 and 8. Previously, it was spread across four chapters on requirements gathering and evaluation—between which there is much commonality of methods, just a difference in how the results are used.
Three very nice features of the first edition are carried over to this version: the use of ‘Boxes’ to provide real-life examples of ideas presented in the text; ‘Activities’ that suggest things for the reader to do—often fun things, like watching a TV show with the sound off to better appreciate the role of gestures in communications; and interviews with HCI researchers and practitioners.
Remember to look at the book's website, which has even more case studies than in the past.
This text is not just for classroom use; the practitioner of UI design who is working from experience without formal instruction will surely find this book very helpful and useful.
A well-known HCI mantra is ‘users perform tasks using computers.’ This implies that the user interface designer needs to know about users, tasks, and computers. The major strength of this book is teaching how to learn about users and the tasks they perform and then to apply that knowledge in creating, evaluating, and refining designs that do indeed allow users to perform their tasks. That's the process to which I referred earlier. And the book is grounded in a host of examples that make the process come alive!
I recommend this text to my fellow HCI teachers. It's a gem.
Jim Foley
GVU Center and College of Computing
Georgia Tech
Atlanta, GA
Foreword to the first edition
As predicted by many visionaries, devices everywhere are getting ‘smarter’. My camera has a multi-modal hierarchical menu and form interface. Even my toaster has a microprocessor. Computing is not just for computers anymore. So when the authors wrote the subtitle ‘beyond human-computer interaction’, they wanted to convey that the book generalizes the human side to people, both individuals and groups, and the computer side to desktop computers, handheld computers, phones, cameras… maybe even toasters.
My own interest in this book is motivated by having been a software developer for 20 years, during which time I was a professor and consultant for 12. Would the book serve as a textbook for students? Would it help bring software development practice into a new age of human-centered interaction design?
A textbook for students…
More than anything, I think students need to be motivated, inspired, challenged, and I think this book, particularly Chapters 1–52, will do that. Many students will not have the motivating experience of seeing projects and products fail because of a lack of attention, understanding, and zeal for the user, but as I read the opening chapters, I imagined students thinking, ‘This is what I've been looking for!’ The interviews will provide students with the wisdom of well-chosen experts: what's important, what worked (or didn't), and why. I see students making career choices based on this motivating material.
The rest of the book covers the art and some of the science of interaction design, the basic knowledge needed by practitioners and future innovators. Chapters 6–9 give a current view of analysis, design, and prototyping, and the book's website should add motivating examples. Chapters 10–14 cover evaluation in enough depth to facilitate understanding, not just rote application. Chapter 15 brings it all together, adding more depth. For each topic, there are ample pointers to further reading, which is important because interaction design is not a one-book discipline.
Finally, the book itself is pedagogically well designed. Each chapter describes its aims, contains examples and subtopics, and ends with key points, assignments, and an annotated bibliography for more detail.
A guide for development teams…
When I lead or consult on software projects, I face the same problem over and over: many people in marketing and software development—these are the people who have the most input into design, but it applies to any members of multidisciplinary teams—have little knowledge or experience building systems with a user-centered focus. A user-centered focus requires close work with users (not just customer–buyers), from analysis through design, evaluation, and maintenance. A lack of user-centered focus results in products and services that often do not meet the needs of their intended users. Don Norman's design books have convinced many that these problems are not unique to software, so this book's focus on interaction design feels right.
To help software teams adopt a user-centered focus, I've searched for books with end-to-end coverage from analysis, to design, to implementation (possibly of prototypes), to evaluation (with iteration). Some books have tried to please all audiences and have become encyclopedias of user interface development, covering topics worth knowing, but not in enough detail for readers to understand them. Some books have tried to cover theory in depth and tried to appeal to developers who have little interest in theory. Whatever the reasons for these choices, the results have been lacking. This book has chosen fewer topics and covered them in more depth; enough depth, I think, to put the ideas into practice. I think the material is presented in a way that is understandable by a wide audience, which is important in order for the book to be useful to whole multidisciplinary teams.
A recommended book…
I've been waiting for this book for many years. I think it's been worth the wait.
As the director of the HCI Bibliography project (www.hcibib.org), a free-access HCI portal receiving a half-million hits per year, I receive many requests for suggestions for books, particularly from students and software development managers. To answer that question, I maintain a list of recommended readings in ten categories (with 20 000 hits per year). Until now, it's been hard to recommend just one book from that list. I point people to some books for motivation, other books for process, and books for specific topics (e.g. task analysis, ergonomics, usability testing). This book fits well into half the categories in my list and makes it easier to recommend one book to get started and to have on hand for development.
I welcome the commitment of the authors to building a website for the book. It's a practice that has been adopted by other books in the field to offer additional information and keep the book current. The site also presents interactive content to aid in tasks like conducting surveys and heuristic evaluations. I look forward to seeing the book's site present new materials, but as director of www.hcibib.org, I hope they use links to, instead of re-inventing, existing resources.
Gary Perlman
Columbus, Ohio