The information in this book ranges from general concepts to specific implementation guidelines. Although much of it can be found scattered across many different information sources, Brown deftly condenses most of the important concepts into ten chapters. He includes hundreds of practical guidelines that can facilitate the design of software interfaces that consider the user.
The general human-computer interface (HCI) concepts are founded in the principles of cognitive psychology and supported by experimental evidence as well as engineering experience. The author considers the computer as a tool to help the user, and stresses the importance of reducing the amount of mental processing needed to use this tool. This framework emphasizes the need to understand human mental processing requirements in order to design a system based on the capabilities of both the system and the users.
The first chapter summarizes the general principles on which the specific recommendations in the remainder of the book are based. It covers important topics such as the users’ mental models of how the system operates, the importance of consistency, and designing for the progressive disclosure and graceful evolution of the system. The rest of the book presents specific guidelines, organized by topic. One chapter discusses the design of display formats, including conventions, layout of data, and highlighting. Other chapters discuss effective wording, appropriate use of color and color coding, and the design of effective graphics and icons.
In the chapter devoted to dialogue design, the author simplifies some fairly complicated concepts by pointing out that users need to feel in control of an interactive session. Topics such as status information, menus, commands, and system response time are all approached with this in mind. Another chapter discusses data entry, including prompts, input data format, and keyboard entries. An entire chapter is devoted to various control and display devices. With multi-modal input becoming more common, this chapter will be extremely useful for designers of such systems. Error correction, error messages, and online guidance or help sessions are discussed in another chapter.
The final chapter is devoted to the implementation of the guidelines discussed in the preceding chapters. Important topics, such as establishing the role of the HCI in the development of the system, the importance of knowing the users, defining the tasks, and incorporating the guidelines are all discussed. This chapter also covers training software designers in HCI design, developing the software tools needed to build the interfaces, prototyping, testing, and iterative refinement. These topics are considerably easier to read about than to execute, but Brown provides many helpful suggestions on how to accomplish these difficult tasks. This compendium of concepts and practical suggestions should be a useful reference for system designers.
