GUI Bloopers – Dont’s and Do’s

Amazons Beschreibung

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 newcomers realise 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, labelling 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 out-takes 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 3:1, Johnson panders to our invertebrate instinct to measure our own successes by someone else’s failure. To his credit, he recognises 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 as an appendix. One criticism was of 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.

Meine Meinung

Ein richtiges Kochbuch für Interfacegerichte. Eine Sammlung von schlechten Beispielen und deren Verbesserung. Für unterschiedliche Lesergruppen (Programmierer, Manager, Gestalter, Nutzer) aufbereitet.
Ist einfach geschrieben. Für weit fortgeschrittene GUI Designer ist das Buch nur bedingt zu empfehlen, weil viele Beispiele meist auf dem Niveau von Usability Neulingen sind.

Literaturverweis

Johnson, J. (2000): “GUI Bloopers”, Morgan Kaufmann

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Literaturverweis:
Johnson, J. (2000): “GUI Bloopers – Dont’s and Do’s for Software Developers and Web Designers”, San Diego: Academic Press

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