图灵交互设计丛书:亲爱的界面•让用户乐于使用、爱不释手

by Lukas Mathis

　　《亲爱的界面——让用户乐于使用、爱不释手》主要介绍如何设计出具有可用性的应用程序和网站，不但让用户乐于使用，而且令其爱不释手。可用性是设计大厦的基石，作者详细介绍了如何将可用性融入设计、测试及开发的各个流程，如何优化设计过程、把握设计重点、提高设计效率。另外，作者在本书中给出了大量宝贵建议，传授了用户界面的设计与评估技巧，提供了独具匠心的设计视角。
　　《亲爱的界面——让用户乐于使用、爱不释手》适用于设计人员、开发人员、产品经理、专业软件开发工程师和用户界面设计师。

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Programming, Usability, Software, Technology, Business

218 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 18, 2011

Reviews

[Teodora Gulie]

As a beginner to this topic, I found it very useful since it tackles various ideas of UX, gives advice, contains lots of references to articles and books in each chapter. Also, information is concise making it easy to read. It's a good starting point.

[Kiri]

Excellent text that covers the whole arc of product design, from initial research to design to implementation to evaluation (testing). I probably wouldn't use every idea listed in the book (nor need to), but there is useful content here both in terms of specific methods (e.g., card sorting) and abstract considerations (e.g., "features are not requirements", discoverability, and "instead of interrupting, offer undo"). Very readable!

[Hunter Hart]

It's profoundly frustrating when products don't behave as ex expected. Products with great usability on the other hand are a pleasure to use and have an easier time to create value for their customers.

Designed for Use is the best book you can get about usability of web & mobile applications. It covers a wide range of usability concepts and research in a way that’s very accessible even if your background is in so

[Chibimagic]

This book felt a little uneven. It covered good topics around usability of software, but some chapters felt extremely cursory of rushed, while others went into too much detail about specific techniques. I felt like I got too much and not enough information at the same time. Overall, it’s an important topic, and this book gives a good overview, but I would skip the detailed technique chapters.

[Johnny]

The book offers a good overview on how the different parts of UX fit together. I missed new ideas and approaches that are not already covered in any other book on this topic.

[Michaela]

The principles in this book were sound, but the examples were dated (2nd ed., 2016).

[Elspeth]

Though I'm reading this for a class it was very easy to follow. I appreciated the summaries at the end of every chapter and the further reading links. I will definitely refer back to it in my future UX experiences.

[Ronald]

I spend most of my programming time working on the back end of systems but have been called on to contribute to user interface portions of solutions. I'll admit that UX is not a passion of mine but I thought it would be wise to better understand the thinking that goes into creating a usable interface, so I picked up a copy of the book. At the very least, it would allow me to better contribute in meetings when I get asked my opinion on which option I think is best.

Much like the rest of the software engineering world, there is no "one way to rule them all". You have to understand what is out there, try something and test, test, test. The book is split into techniques and ideas where techniques are concrete steps you can use to create a usable interface, such as paper prototyping. Ideas, on the other hand, are more abstract and general covering topics such as how to write usable text or animations. Being a UX newbie, most of the ideas in the book were new to me and I found them to be very interesting. I especially liked the notion of capturing your user's context prior to exiting an application in an attempt to determine if they succeeded in their task or gave up frustrated. Tracking what features your users actually use was also interesting probably because I've been in many discussions over adding complexity to a feature that nobody uses. Maybe there are ways to prove or disprove that assertion? Apparently, much of UX is testing your design and getting useful feedback and there are discussions on various ways to do that.

Overall, I found the book to be useful as it gave me broad coverage in the topic and pointed me to resources in case I wanted more depth.

[Johnny]

A good book on usability. The different chapters look on different aspects you may want to consider. I found the clear distinction between technical chapters and idea chapters very useful. You instantly know which one will be deeper and may be more useful when you try to adapt them. While the idea chapters should transport an idea that you don’t need to implement right away.

While the structure is well designed to answer a specific question, they also strictly separate the content. Without continuation you may quickly start again reading after a break for a few weeks. However, if you read it from cover to cover it has too few interconnections that push your reading forward. Another point that is missing is when should you sacrifice certain ideas. While this depends on the concrete use case, a few examples on how to intentionally ignoring good practices to achieve a greater good would be helpful.

[Matthew Connolly]

A good overview of the process of designing systems or websites in a user-centered way and then testing them to uncover usability issues. Chapters are short, easily digestible and mostly give a high-level overview of a particular usability testing technique or design concept. Experienced designers may find many of the principles and methods familiar, but it's good to be reminded of them from time to time; also, the suggestions for further reading are extensive and enticing.

[Anton Sotkov]

This is a very useful book. I way, it’s similar to Dan Saffer’s Designing For Interaction albeit more modern, perhaps that’s why I’ve skimmed through some of the chapters. I’m sure I’ll come back to it later, though, to refresh my memory, because the topics it raises are important, and it’s extremely well written.

[Arnav Shah]

A solid book that goes over theoretical and practical ways to improve the design of software products. There's quite a bit on conducting usability studies, which I wasn't too interested in, but I'm sure others will find it useful. Overall, it's a quick and easy read that covers critical but often forgotten good principles.

[Chris Adams]

This book is a fast read, and full of short chapters that lend themselves well to dipping into and out of.

There's enough practical content here to start improving how you build products immediately, and is extremely accessible, enough pointers where to go for more depth in a subject as well.

Great to refer to after reading through, for reference.

Recommended

[Davidkjelkerud]

Very hands on. So much that it even has example manuscripts for how to ask questions in usability tests. Spanning basically the whole design process it covers many subjects, giving actionable advise on most. Good, fresh examples with recent tech.

[John-Philip]

It's a good introduction to the methods used in UX. It covers most of the techniques, together with tips and thoughts. If you're interesting in knowing more about working with UX this could be a interesting read.

[Chris]

A good book in a sense that it covers most of the people, principles and practices that you need to know. It's more like a UX dictionary. It's pretty basic and probably won't be useful for your next project. But it tells you what resources you can refer to in depth.

[Carolina Bento]

Very detailed book on how to build products that meet their users' needs. Loved how it is so very well organized. Gives a clear idea of the meaning and need of each technique without losing losing sight of how it fits in the product development cycle.

[Tom Karlo]

A good into to usability principals, but a little basic if you've ever studied the topic.

[Connie]

Skip the chapters about usability testing... some pretty good chapters about design

[Bruno Bonamin]

Good insight about how to have a good design process to create a new product, mostly web based solutions.

[Alex Miles]

Product design 101

[Chrisx]

A great overview over nearly everything that a UI or UX Designer needs! to know.