Designing Interfaces, by Jennifer Tidwell, is appropriately subtitled “Patterns for Effective Interaction Design”. This book is an excellent introduction for the beginning designer as well as a wonderful reference. The book itself is elegeantly designed and beautiful to behold, with carefully chosen colours and typography, well-written and enjoyable copy, and lovely full-colour screenshots and examples.
In the first section Tidwell discusses what users do, explaining the importance of how users think in designing effective interfaces. Several user patterns are discussed to help introduce user behaviour.
Designing Interfaces goes on to cover a broad range of topics in designing the user experience, with easy-to-read, clear descriptions and discussions preceding patterns for interface design. Information architecture and application structure are considered first and foremost, with navigation methods, page layout, actions and commands, information graphics, forms and controls, and builders and editors to follow.
Finally visual style and aesthetics are considered to ensure interfaces are not only usable but enjoyable. Here Tidwell reminds us that interface design must achieve more than effectiveness, and in fact interfaces become more usable by being enjoyable. As Donald Norman states, “positive affect makes people more tolerant of minor difficulties and more flexible and creative in finding solutions”. Tidwell has certainly written a book that will show the reader how to create positive affect, enhancing “creative, breadth-first thinking”, from information architecture right down to the nuances of images and typography used.
An absolute must-have for any user experience designer.
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