Design for Software: A Playbook for Developers

by Erik Klimczak

A unique resource to help software developers create a desirable user experience Today, top-flight software must feature a desirable user experience. This one-of-a-kind book creates a design process specifically for software, making it easy for developers who lack design background to create that compelling user experience. Appealing to both tech-savvy designers and creative-minded technologists, it establishes a hybrid discipline that will produce first-rate software. Illustrated in full color, it shows how to plan and visualize the design to create software that works on every level.

Today's software demands attention to the quality of the user experience; this book guides you through a practical design process to achieve that goal Approaches the mechanics of design with a process inspired by art and science Avoids the abstract and moves step by step through techniques you can put to use immediately Covers planning your design, tested methods, how to visualize like a designer, psychology of design, and how to create software that developers will appreciate Explores such elements as choosing the right typeface and managing interactivity Design for A Playbook for Developers brings the art of good design together with the science of software development to create programs with pizazz.

Genres: Design, Software, Technology

463 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strikes a rather useful balance between breadth and depth, for the large part. Most topics are not covered in much depth, but nearly always the reader is referred to another source that will provide more info and/or practical tools. As such, I'm not sure how often I would return to this specific text as a reference, though it is an excellent place to start getting some very practical ideas about designing software applications (and at least a couple of the ideas are things I can apply directly to my current work). Recommended particularly if you work with software but have never read much on design before.

[João · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good source of insight and inspiration. Incredible amount of typos. Could have better typography, sometimes the book is able to violate its own prescriptions (e.g., on one page, some lists of dos and don'ts are visually indistinguishable from each other).