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BlueForest Networks
GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don\'ts and Dos
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann - September 14, 2007 ISBN-10: 0123706432, ISBN-13: 9780123706430
Author: Jeff Johnson
424 pages
GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don\'ts and Dos - book reviews: 12
A major revision of a classic reference, GUI Bloopers 2.0 looks at user interface design bloopers from commercial software, Web sites, Web applications, and information appliances, explaining how intelligent, well-intentioned professionals make these mistakes--and how you can avoid them. While equipping you with the minimum of theory, GUI expert Jeff Johnson presents the reality of interface design in an entertaining, anecdotal, and instructive way.
* Updated to reflect the bloopers that are common today, incorporating many comments and suggestions from first edition readers.
* Takes a learn-by-example approach that teaches how to avoid common errors.
* Covers bloopers in a wide range of categories: GUI controls, graphic design and layout, text messages, interaction strategies, Web site design -- including search, link, and navigation, responsiveness issues, and management decision-making.
* Organized and formatted so information needed is quickly found, the new edition features call-outs for the examples and informative captions to enhance quick knowledge building.
* Hundreds of illustrations: both the DOs and the DON'Ts for each topic covered, with checklists and additional bloopers on www.gui-bloopers.com.
Outstanding
GUI Bloopers is lucid and compelling, and fun to read. It's one of the best books on UI design that I have encountered.
Benjamin Glick
31 August, 2009
Excellent book for developers who are not interaction experts
This book is aimed at programmers and software developers who might not have much if any formal training in UI design and interaction design.
Each chapter is named after a class of common errors (e.g. 'Navigation Bloopers', 'Taking control away from users', etc.) and gives many examples of the error, and shows how to fix the errors.
The book seems to focus about equally on desktop application UI and web UI, so both types of developers will find it handy.
Note that there's probably not much new here if you're already an experienced UI/interaction designer or usability expert.
A. Benenson
07 April, 2009
Well written compilation of common GUI errors
This is a very well written and very readable book, but readers should not expect to learn as much as from a typical good book of 407 pages because most of bloopers described in the book can be avoided just by common sense. I suspect any experienced software developer with some experience of interaction with customers would be able avoid the vast majority of the bloopers especially those illogical ones. However this book still has great value because it enhances common sense and systematically organizes bloopers into categories: GUI control, navigation, textual, layout, interaction and responsiveness. It also talks about how to manage bloopers.
GUI is a very difficult topic to write about because it involves both art and science. The science part is psychology or cognitive science. GUI evolves constantly. One can list all the principles in a few sentences (e.g. logical, intuitive, simple, visually appealing, etc.), but one can compile much more bloopers than this book contains. I think this book has about the right balance. All application developers can benefit from reading this book or some literature like this. However such book does not have much reference value for sitting on a bookshelf, so get the book, read it and pass it to a friend.
H. Zhang
30 March, 2009
Always good to Keep good principles in mind.
I've been developing software for about 12 years and I think is good to have GUI principles reviewed every couple of years. This book is easy to read, has good practical examples, it may seem sometimes simple and basic but still, I'm sure we all make UI bloopers so it's good to keep them in mind. It helped me a lot with some vices created through years and/or certain projects. I'm thinking on passing the book to one of the PM's. I'm sure he will find a couple of good tips. Even if you think you are a good software guy, this may be helpful, either validate or give you some guidance.
Fernando J. Guzman
16 December, 2008
Revalues the importance and complexity of GUI design
The introduction of programming tools such as VisualBasic probably contributed to the misperception that designing a form was something easy to achieve. Using drag and drop controls to build a form certainly is, but creating an unambiguous and task-oriented screen flow is another story.
Jeff Johnson did an excellent job. The chapters arrange the "bloopers" into meaningful categories (GUI Controls, Navigation, Textual, etc) and the table of contents makes it very easy to locate a specific topic.
Personally, I like his approach of "Don'ts followed by Dos". Presenting an example of bad design first, forced me to try to spot where the mistakes were (not always an easy task) and this contributed, in my opinion, to a better learning experience. Another nice surprise was to learn in appendix B, the way this second edition was "usability-tested" and also, a very important although not so obvious concept, "Reviewing is not usability-testing".
This book is very easy to read and understand and I would certainly recommend it to every developer (from beginner through to senior level) involved directly or indirectly with any GUI design or implementation.
Edelmiro Fuentes
07 November, 2008
