- Paperback: 576 pages
- Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (Mar 17 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1558605827
- ISBN-13: 978-1558605824
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 18.5 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 998 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #488,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
From Amazon
In GUI Bloopers, consultant Jeff Johnson uses 550+ pages to illustrate common pitfalls in user interface design, the all-important iceberg tip that end users confuse with applications and that developers confuse with end users. Reporting on 82 incidents of bad design, Johnson manages to cover the essential point of his message: software designers should think of their user interfaces from the user's point of view. Not profound, but profoundly overlooked in most low-end to mid-range development efforts. His codification of GUI design in eight predictable principles will help GUI newbies realize that the customer must be pleased with the product. Of course, the customer doesn't always understand what he or she wants. Hence, GUI development is iterative. When the customer is not at hand, a surrogate will do, so usability testing is essential.
The bloopers include mistakes in window design, labeling consistency, visual/grammatical parallel construction, coherence of look and feel, and clarity. Most perceptively, Johnson observes that CPU speed in the development group hides many design mistakes. Moreover, context-scoping, already a subtle problem in software design, must be implemented in GUI design. Input error handling is the most psychologically sensitive of all GUI design characteristics. User error messages can easily be too vague or too specific, and diagnostic error messages should be user-manageable, if not actually user-interpretable.
Like the Hollywood outtakes that gave us the "blooper," the entertainment quotient here is measured in mistakes, not successes. Teaching by counter example rather than by example at an estimated ratio of three to one, Johnson panders to our invertebrate instinct to measure our own successes by someone else's failure. To his credit, he recognizes that user interfaces include pedestrian texts (like his) as well as graphical interfaces for computer applications. His self-referential style gives the book an egocentric slant, but he is both priest and practitioner: he submitted a draft to usability testers and reports the results in an appendix. One criticism was that there were too many negative examples. Hmmm.
Thanks to other tester comments, GUI Bloopers is a browsable book, allowing the few nuggets of wisdom to be located. For the most part, the book's value can be captured by reading the seven-page table of contents carefully. --Peter Leopold
From Library Journal
GUI stands for graphical user interface. Bloopers are incredibly dumb designs created over the past ten years such as error messages, unreadable fonts, hidden functionality, installation nightmares, back buttons that don't go back, and untimely feedback. Highlighting those and other (82 total) examples of bad design, Johnson, president and primary consultant at UI a Wizards Inc., believes software designers should design from the user's point of view. Readers will find his chapter on good design principles useful; recommended for university and large public libraries.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
"I wish! Alas, many others have stated this principle before me, and it doesn't seem to have done much good." Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
"I wish! Alas, many others have stated this principle before me, and it doesn't seem to have done much good." Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good pratical advice,
By
This review is from: GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers (Paperback)
Overall I liked this book. It has many practical guidelines, that you can apply immediately. My only problem was there were many trivial bloopers and many bloopers which may not be bloopers. Again and again he refers to his reviews of client software. He rarely refers to his user studies or other research. This makes me question if some of his bloopers are really bloopers or just his opinion.
5.0 out of 5 stars
How it helped me,
By Eric Ibsen (Daly City, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers (Paperback)
I read this book knowing really nothing about gui design. It is a very methodical book and was extremely helpful to me. I even took the time to make a checklist of things to look out for and then applied the concepts to my designs. The result is that on every software demo we give of our product developed using the checklist, we get the same comments: "Wow! This is really easy to use/learn!" nuf said.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Experienced developer opinion,
By Julio Nobre (Faro, Algarve Portugal) - See all my reviews
This review is from: GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers (Paperback)
I've been a developer over the paste 13 years so I am, as one said, the main target for cryptichism (from the author's point of view) in this book. But I've got to admit it, he is almost always, right. Never, in my life, i've found such an amount of good advices compiled together. If you want to improve usability this is a good choice.Congratulations Mr.Jeff Jonhson! You are one of kind.
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