Practical User Interface Design. Making GUIs Work

Citation

Zetie, C. (1998), "Practical User Interface Design. Making GUIs Work", Industrial Robot, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 153-154. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.1998.25.2.153.3

Intended as a book for the “ordinary computer professional”, the author sets out to provide the application designer with the information, skills and techniques needed to design effective and attractive interfaces. Starting at fundamental psychological principles, the book offers an insight into the design and use of graphical (or essentially window like) interfaces from the conceptual model through to the detailed design and selection of features. Examples in the text from common software packages enhance the relevance of the information, and there is a very simple demonstration disk that runs under Microsoft Windows 3.1 and above, which also contains a number of free to copy icons. The humorous and purposeful style gets the information across very well, while debunking some of the howlers made by the professionals. Some of the detail design information might be redundant to a programmer using one of the popular high level development packages and the price might be on the high side, however, a few hours reading the book would be well spent before embarking on a new project.