Most programmers' fear of user interface (UI) programming comes from their fear of doing UI design. They think that UI design is like graphic design—the mysterious process by which creative, latte-drinking, all-black-wearing people produce cool-looking, artistic pieces. Most programmers see themselves as analytic, logical thinkers instead—strong at reasoning, weak on artistic judgment, and incapable of doing UI design. In this brilliantly readable book, author Joel Spolsky proposes simple, logical rules that can be applied without any artistic talent to improve any user interface, from traditional GUI applications to websites to consumer electronics. Spolsky's primary axiom, the importance of bringing the program model in line with the user model, is both rational and simple. In a fun and entertaining way, Spolky makes user interface design easy for programmers to grasp. After reading User Interface Design for Programmers, you'll know how to design interfaces with the user in mind. You'll learn the important principles that underlie all good UI design, and you'll learn how to perform usability testing that works.

A comprehensive sourcebook of practical guidelines for developing clear software user interfaces.

The book contains the proceedings and reports of the "Workshop on User Interface Management Systems", held in Seeheim, Federal Re public of Germany, November 1-3, 1983. The workshop brought toge ther experts in using and developing techniques for managing the dialo gue between users and interactive graphics systems. The purpose of the workshop was to produce an agreed report contrasting existing ap proaches, and outlining directions for future work. Four different areas were defined and addressed at the workshop, namely a) role, model, structure and construction of a UIMS b) dialogue specification tools c) interface of the UIMS to the application d) user's conceptual model All participants prepared papers each in one ofthose problem areas. The papers have been rewritten in the light of the issues discussed during the workshop. Also a subgroup report was produced for each problem area summarizing the results of the discussions at the workshop. Preface User Interface Management Systems (UlMS) are the mediators between the user and the application programs. As more and more in teractive programs become widely available,methods and techniques of designing and implementing acceptable user interfaces have to be inves tigated. Since many years, research on the design of user interface mana gement systems is going on. This EUROGRAPHICS Workshop follows from the ACM SIGGRAPH Workshop on Graphical Input and Interac tion Techniques of May, 1982 in Seattle (see: Computer Graphics 17(1), 1983), and the IFIP WG 5.

This volume is a record of the Workshop on User Interface Management Systems and Environments held at INESC, Lisbon, Portugal, between 4 and 6 June 1990. The main impetus for the workshop came from the Graphics and Interaction in ESPRIT Technical Interest Group of the European Community ESPRIT Programme. The Graphics and Interac tion in ESPRIT Technical Interest Group arose from a meeting of researchers held in Brussels in May 1988, which identified a number of technical areas of common interest across a significant number of ESPRIT I and ESPRIT II projects. It was recognized that there was a need to share information on such activities between projects, to disseminate results from the projects to the world at large, and for projects to be aware of related activities elsewhere in the world. The need for a Technical Interest Group was confirmed at a meeting held during ESPRIT Technical Week in November 1989, attended by over 50 representatives from ESPRIT projects and the Commission of the European Communities. Information exchange sessions were organized during the EUROGRAPHICS '89 confer ence, with the intention of disseminating information from ESPRIT projects to the wider research and development community, both in Europe and beyond.

This accessible and authoritative reference explores the practical implications of new trends in the development of user interface software. Developments such as groupware, virtual reality and multimedia are likely to alter the way we all view software both as developers and users. This book looks beyond the hype and tells what all the buzzwords mean for the working programmer and developer.

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. The much-anticipated fifth edition of Designing the User Interface provides a comprehensive, authoritative introduction to the dynamic field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Students and professionals learn practical principles and guidelines needed to develop high quality interface designs—ones that users can understand, predict, and control. It covers theoretical foundations, and design processes such as expert reviews and usability testing. Numerous examples of direct manipulation, menu selection, and form fill-in give readers an understanding of excellence in design The new edition provides updates on current HCI topics with balanced emphasis on mobile devices, Web, and desktop platforms. It addresses the profound changes brought by user-generated content of text, photo, music, and video and the raised expectations for compelling user experiences. Provides a broad survey of designing, implementing, managing, maintaining, training, and refining the user interface of interactive systems. Describes practical techniques and research-supported design guidelines for effective interface designs Covers both professional applications (e.g. CAD/CAM, air traffic control) and consumer examples (e.g. web services, e-government, mobile devices, cell phones, digital cameras, games, MP3 players) Delivers informative introductions to development methodologies, evaluation techniques, and user-interface building tools. Supported by an extensive array of current examples and figures illustrating good design principles and practices. Includes dynamic, full-color presentation throughout. Guides students who might be starting their first HCI design project Accompanied by a Companion Website with additional practice opportunities and informational resources for both students and professors.