HCI
Human Computer Interaction
Recently I read an article from the Journal of Information Architecture by Brigitte Kaltenbacher regarding the role of emotions in Human Computer Interaction research. She referenced Damasio's book, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorry and the Feeling Brain and the idea intrigued me. Kaltenbacher's premise is that the human decision making process is highly influenced by emotion and therefore emotions and feelings cannot be ignored by the interaction designer. Antonio Damasio explores the connectio
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability is the result of Steve Krug sharing his expertise in a very controversial field. If you count up all the web designers in the world, that number would come close to the number of opinions on the One Right Way to design a web site. Krug addresses how to resolve these "religious debates" as well as how to take a common sense approach to web usability. He also details a great way to do some usability testing which he insists is an abs
In The Non-Designer's Design Book, Robin Williams presents a succinct primer on how to get started doing good design. The thoughts laid out in the book are simple enough for someone with little formal training to compehend and yet sophisticated enough to launch a novice down the path of excellence.
Edward Tufte lays out a very comprehensive study of how to effectively display information in a visual format. Charts and graphs are a huge part of today's corporate communication medium and yet they are often malformed and fail to convey information properly. This is a great book for laying down some principles that can apply across technologies and medium and help to formulate high quality information communication. Due to the nature of this book, my notes here will be a very brief summary
Dan Ariely tells a fascinating story of pain at the beginning of his book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. As a youth he was involved in an accident that left 70% of his body badly burned. During his recovery he explains that he began to view the ordinary and everyday experiences that he used to experience as though he were an outside observer. He began to analyze the "why" behind daily decision making. This led him to an interest in the field of behaviora
While true to part of its sub-title (it is definitely short) this book leaves somewhat to be desired if you are looking for an "Introduction". Binmore is an expert in using Game Theory so in his book by that title, he definitely gets into the meat of actually applying game theory to real life. He talks about biological evolution, public airwave auctions and election politics. Unfortunately he dives into game theory far too fast and too deep for this to be a good introduction. A more appropri
The underlying principles of Luke Hohmann's Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play are rock solid. Either Hohmann has a solid grasp of marketing principles, project management and cognitive psychology, or he is pretty good at buzz-word bingo. This is an intensely practical book without much meat so if you are looking for a "how-to" manual on getting good ideas from your customers, this book is for you. If you are looking for insight into why these kinds of
Ben Sherwood has experienced some of the toughest survival training in the world. As part of the research for his book, he went through the Aviation Survival Training program in Miramar, CA. There he learned what it's like to be drug across the ocean by a parachute, how it feels to be pulled up a cable in the rotor blast of a helicopter and what a helicopter crew goes through if their chopper crashes in the water. For Sherwood though, survival is about more than just military training and acc
I confess that I did not gain nearly as much from reading this book as I anticipated. My hope was to learn something useful about symbolism and the study of semiotics but instead I learned a lot of the psychology of dreams. If you are into that sort of thing then Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols is a must read. If, like me, you are quite skeptical of that sort of thing then you will be as disappointed as I was with this book. The illustrations in the hard cover book are fantastic, every page
In The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz takes us on an interesting journey through the psychology of choice. Decision theory is an interesting field with many spurs and side-tracks, a number of which Schwartz takes us down. The book covers a lot of ground but manages to stay on theme, namely: too much opportunity for choice is not necessarily a good thing.
R. Keith Sawyer brings a sense of workmanship to the study of creativity in his book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Rather than treat creativity as a mytical quality that only certain humans are embued with, Sawyer points out that creativity is within reach of mere mortals. He begins by debunking the common myths surrounding creative genius (insane people are more creative, creative geniuses work alone etc) and ends by giving some very practical advice on how to become
Jeff Hawkins is the founder of both Palm Computing and Handspring. His lifelong fascination with the brain and how it works led to his study of neuroscience and ultimately to this book. In "On Intelligence", Hawkins presents what he believes is a solid framework for understanding how the brain works. Specifically he explores what it means to "have intelligence." Many of the artificial intelligence efforts underway today focus on ways to mimic the way the brain behaves without regard to how i
In The User Illusion, Tor Norretranders explores a broad range of topics from information theory to cognitive psychology to existentialism. The edition I read is an excellent translation of the Danish author's work. At times it is evident that Tor over-reached in the scope of the book and you sometimes wonder about the point of the book. All in all though it is a fascinating read and for someone interested in Human Computer Interaction as I am, it is a very good survey of a number of excellen
Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini was Apple's "Human Interface Evangelist" at the time he wrote this book. His wry sense of humor and engaging writing style make this a fun read as well as informative. Tog was there in the formative years of the user interface of the Apple and Mac operating systems. His guidelines are foundational for those seeking to design user interfaces even today. The book's content and layout come from his monthly question and answer column in the Apple Direct magazine. While To
This book is fascinating! Over 700 glossy pages take you on a journey through the field of interaction design. (It's a heavy book.. be careful when you pick it up!) Bill Moggridge in Designing Interactions, does a masterful job of presenting the history, the personalities and the principles of the field of interaction design. If you write software, design hardware, design products or are just interested in some really cool stuff... this book is for you!
This is the third "edition" of Cooper's excellent book on human computer interaction design. Cooper's primary tenet in these books is that software is poorly designed, primarily because programmers don't understand what users need and users don't know how to articulate those needs. He argues that designers are needed as intermediates to translate what users really need into terms that programmers can program to.
This is a collection of chapters that are essentially research papers by various authors. The subject matter is generally along the lines of HCI, however some of the topics are very narrow. Among the topics are utilizing AI for the interface, creating better e-commerce web sites and incorporating HCI concepts into the software development life cycle. If you are interested in researching any of these topics, each chapter is well research and each has its own bibliography. What follows is not
Donald Norman provides an excellent treatise in the design issues surrounding usability. He focuses most of his effort on the design of physical products such as automobiles, home appliances and building components, however his attention to computer interaction design is very prescient considering the year of this book’s publishing.
This "review" is more of a sketch of notes I took while reading this book. Crandall, Klein and Hoffman deliver an intensely practical look into a realm of psychology that could be very difficult to comprehend. The book surrounds the notion of Cognitive Task Analysis which is essentially a method of studying how people think. Klein's work has surrounded primarily the way people make decisions (Sources of Power) however in Working Minds the authors also look at how people learn to do new jobs,