About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design,   ISBN:9780470084113

Customer Rating: 

This book is not for software engineers. This is clearly the case since by the author's own words:
"Humans, on the other hand, get angry when they are flatly told they are stupid" - Page 531
"Why is the technology industry generally so inept at designing the interactive parts of digital products?" - Page 8.

When I read the two quotes above, it sounds like "You should never call or imply your audience is stupid, but the people who develop software are stupid."

I will admit I have only got through chapter 1, and parts of other chapters. The part I did read, I found the author's tone just as rude and offensive as the software they are complaining about.

Customer Rating: 

Wide ranging in scope, yet finely focused enough for a variety of disciplines to be able to apply this knowledge directly. Primarily directed at anyone involved in software interface design, its principles could also easily apply to other disciplines as well, such as architecture and industrial design - anyone concerned with how people use products. The only complaint - and it is minor - is that it has a slightly pedantic feel, and its concepts are so refined (e.g.: user personas) that some of the theory may not be practical but for the largest of development budgets. That said, the author(s) still offer ways to scale back on this detail. All in all, a must have on the reference shelf of every interface designer.

Customer Rating: 

The first thing you will notice about this book is that the author is extremely wordy. There is a constant repeat rephrasing of the same information. For instance, you will read that software developers usually don't know what they're doing nine-hundred times in the first chapter(and if the drivel in this book is the best advice a developer receives then it's no wonder). It begins to seem like an endless boring lecture where the speaker is droning on and on without really saying anything. I had read the first seventy pages before realising that I hadn't learned a single thing. He seems more interested in coining terms than conveying any actual information.

The only good thing I can say about my experience with this book is that while scanning through it seemed to have tidbits of useful information in between the mountains of filler. If I was looking for a good book on the subject I would skip this one and pick up one that gets more to the point.

It horrifies me to think that the author had already written another book on the same subject and then decided that he still had more to say.

Customer Rating: 

Scoring in the game of interaction design is very simple. You get 0 points for discovering the obvious and making it easy for the user and -10,000 points for missing it.

This book should be the bible for companies trying to turn their software products around.

Customer Rating: 

I read (and still have) the previous two editions of this book. Unlike the usual "complete revised and updated" hype for new editions, this one has had some serious re-work and expansion.

The whole structure of the book is new and very close to being a complete course/textbook in the Cooper approach to Goal-based Design. All the sections have been expanded based upon reactions to the previous version(s) as well as their collective experience. The most obvious changes are towards describing in greater detail the process and how to integrate it into the large design/development cycle.

For those who have not read (about) Cooper (and his firm's) work, this book is the complete approach in detail. It is written for professional UI designer and developers and makes some assumptions about the background of the reader.

Executives, stakeholders or those needing a more general overview should pick up his other book "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" which was written for that audience. That book includes more business cases and rationale without the heavy details.

As a UI professional for over 20 years find his approach to be the most useful in creating truly useful and usable applications. This book continues to point out how get beyond mere incremental design enhancements to truly revolutionary and winning designs.