Better Software - March 2009 - (Page 14) Books Guide The stickyMinds.coM books Guide is one of the most popular areas on our Web site. With more than 800 books—including many that have been reviewed by thought leaders, industry experts, and your peers—the stickyMinds.coM books Guide is your first stop for finding a good read. Not sure what you’re looking for? Browse books by topic, including: • Project & Team Management • Test & Evaluation • Requirements • Design & Architecture • Development & Deployment • Reviews • Process Improvement • Measurement & Reporting • Security • Defect Tracking • Configuration Management This book should remain a classic for quite some time, as the subject of this book—interaction design—will continue to be relevant as long as people interact with computers. The book addresses the basic problem of “usability,” which is something I have been trying to come to grips with for many years. Trying to implement that concept is tougher still. The concepts addressed are pervasive in the industry. The book defines and addresses these concepts by providing methods of getting good user interface requirements and then turning those into good interface design. The authors have a casual writing style that is easy to follow and understand. They completely describe interactive design concepts and methods. Basic human interaction concepts are addressed first, then the requirements process is discussed, and, finally, the design process is defined. Examples are used liberally to illustrate concepts. The authors’ approach to these concepts is a little different from the norm. For instance, the book places a high value on developing characterizations about the target users. At first, I found this approach daunting, but I warmed up to the concept because, as developers, we rarely try to characterize the users of our systems. The authors showed the importance of doing that. The book is intended for just about everybody interested in interaction design. There are no technical references, and the concepts are easy to understand. When the application of the concepts gets a bit complex, I think the authors do a good job of explaining how to execute the concept. The authors even write about design concepts for screen components such as controls and menus. This may be too much for the casual reader, yet designers, developers, and QA people in general should find this enlightening. Using the knowledge gained from reading this book, I already have asked questions of my development staff that we’ve never asked before. So I intend to use this book as a “keep-at-work” reference guide and use it when wishing to delight our users with easyto-use applications that can assist their business process. Visit www.stickyMinds.com/11-2bookreview to post your comments on this book. Book rEViEW About Face 3: the Essentials of interaction design By: Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, and David Cronin reviewed By: John VanNorman March Weekly coluMns In March, the first month of spring, we’ll see new ideas sprout from requirements guru Ellen Gottesdiener, project and people management leaders Esther Derby and Naomi Karten, and testing talents Clarke Ching and Danny Faught. Every Monday new columns are posted on StickyMinds. Subscribe to the StickyMinds RSS feed to be notified when new columns and other articles are posted on the site. www.stickyminds.com/rss/ 14 BETTER SOFTWARE MARCH 2009 www.StickyMinds.com http://www.StickyMinds.com http://www.StickyMinds.com http://www.StickyMinds.com http://www.StickyMinds.com/11-2bookreview http://www.stickyminds.com/rss/ http://www.StickyMinds.com
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