As is well known, human beings have many inherent frailties and failings. Our eyesight is imperfect, and is subject to shortcomings like sensitivity to contrast but not so much to absolute brightness, blind spots, and possibly color blindness. The way we read, and the manner and extent to which text that we read is processed and retained in memory, leave a lot to be desired. We are flawed learners, and cannot always put whatever we have learned to effective use when presented with arbitrary challenges. Our decision-making skills are often faulty, except possibly in the context of a small set of activities where we have been trained to achieve a modicum of competence.

Besides presenting psychologists, philosophers, and others with a set of vexing problems, these issues also carry practical significance to human–computer interaction (HCI) designers, who must account for them while designing good user interfaces. It is in this context that this book, an updated second edition of a well-received work, finds its use. The author has a very interesting and entertaining way of presenting his material: he avoids tedious prose and jargon, but aids the text in a great many instances with beautiful illustrations (he obviously knows his subject well, and thus knows how to lay out his ideas in a manner that people can readily grasp). The slight informality of the author’s writing style, which may be seen even in the titles of the 14 chapters (for example, “Our Perception is Biased,” “Our Vision is Optimized to See Structure,” “Reading is Unnatural,” and “Human Decision Making is Rarely Rational”), rather than the more stiff (and possibly pretentious) style common in academic writing, makes for easy and captivating reading, something not commonly encountered in a nonfiction work on an important subject.

Quite a few of the tidbits in this book are probably well known. For instance, even many children and teenagers are aware of the Müller-Lyer illusion; we all know about the blind spot in vision and how to demonstrate it; and many of us have at least heard of the Gestalt principles of visual perception (and perhaps can even name one or two). However, the author’s skill is seen in how he arranges his material into a coherent narrative that allows readers, regardless of prior knowledge, to gain a significant understanding. Though merely reading this book once or twice would probably not make someone a good user interface designer (that surely takes practice), even such a limited effort could well prevent someone from making obvious bad choices. Thus, software developers and anyone else who may be concerned with designing good user interfaces should read this book. In certain academic contexts, it may also be a good supplement to Edward Tufte’s classic work [1].

My one grouse about the book is that the author’s illustrative examples all seem to be from desktop/laptop systems (Windows and Mac OS X, and applications running on them), and in some cases from well-designed or poorly designed websites. Though the principles illustrated can doubtless be applied to other contexts as well, I wonder if some modifications, which are not dealt with in the book, are necessary for smaller systems (mobile phones and tablet devices). Lest we forget, there are a whole host of user interfaces for complex engineered systems other than computers, where user interface designers also have an important role.

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