Jeff Johnson (4)Recensioni

Every software designer and web designer should read this book! It explains in an organized, easy-to-understand way how the brain works and what the implications are for designing software tools that meet user needs. Apart from it's practicality, the descriptions of how the brain perceives, stores and operates on information are fascinating on their own. The examples are illustrative and relevant. I expect to refer to it frequently and thoroughly enjoyed reading it as well.

I like the straight-forward format of listing all the common problems and then potential remedies for each, as opposed to other books where the author dwells so much on the "process", anecdotes, and trivial filler content.

Of the 80+ points listed in this book, some are great Don's:
- Using checkboxes for non-ON/OFF setting
- Using dynamic menus where items change
- Using tabs as radio buttons
- Negative checkboxes
- Same title on different windows
- Asking user for random seeds
- Long ops don’t display progress
- Long ops provide no way to cancel
- Giving programmers the fastest computers

While some other donts are a bit too trvial, I think, such as these:
- Tiny fonts
- Too much text
- Bad writing.
- Cursor can’t keep up.
- “Cancel” doesn’t cancel
- Treating ui as low pri.
- Bad initial window location.
- Noisy search result
- Labels too far from data field.

But I suppose there is value in completeness.

Have not read the v1.0 of this book, so perhaps there were more interesting tidbits in the earlier edition.