Book Review - Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action By Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Category Book Review Robert Hoekman Jr. Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action
Since I'm starting to pay more attention to user-interface concepts and design, I felt this book was required reading for me... Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action by Robert Hoekman, Jr. Besides offering a number of excellent concepts, he does so in a manner not often seen in other books. He tells you what he was thinking and how he got to that decision point. That's the kind of insight I need to improve my skills.
Contents:
Part 1 - Getting Oriented: Designing the First Impression; Showing Your Personality; Zen and the Art of Navigation; All Links Are Not Created Equal; Getting Your Head Out of the Tag Cloud
Part 2 - Learning: Surfacing the Trigger Words; Labeling the Interface; Beyond Words and Onto Video
Part 3 - Searching: Making Suggestions; Getting Through the Results; Refining Your Search
Part 4 - Diving In: Standardizing Playback Controls; Nailing Form Layout; Conquering the Wizard; Going the Extra Mile with Inline Validation; Simplifying Long Forms; Getting Them Signed In; Counting Characters
Part 5 - Participating: Building Profiles; Editing; Making Social Connections; Designing the Obvious Blog; Inviting Discussion; Getting a Good Rating
Part 6 - Managing Information: Making RSS Meaningful; Tagging It; Getting Reorganized with Drag-and-Drop; Managing Interruptions with System Notifications
Part 7 - Moving On: Signing Off; Dusting Off Dusty Users; Letting Them Go
Conclusion: The Keys to Great Design
Hoekman is well-known for design concepts, and I tend to like what he comes up with. The difference here over other books is that he starts off with a request or issue to solve, and then takes you through his mental process that got him to the resulting solution. For instance, All Links Are Not Created Equal... The need was to create a list of links for a call-center intranet page. The idea was to somehow communicate the current issues affecting the users, in chronological order, maximum five links. I would take the normal route (which is where he started) of just putting the last five links out there. But to communicate chronological order, that wouldn't work. Then he placed numbers in front of each link (1 to 5). OK, but still "flat" as he termed it. He started trying to incorporate a concept he learned about called "ambient signifiers", or ways to communicate information based on the way it's displayed. This led him to drop the numbers and use decreasing font sizes to show order and importance. Much better, but he still wanted more. He then stumbled on an "aging" technique whereby he would not only decrease the font size, but also lighten the text color the further down you went. This combination communicated both importance and age, and was exactly the solution he was looking for. Notice that he didn't go into it with a preconceived "spec" as to how it would work. But through his mental conversation, you see both how he got there and why he made the designs that he did.
I'm perfectly happy admitting I don't know it all when it comes to design concepts. But what I don't like is to read "do it this way because I said so" material that doesn't explain why. Hoekman makes that rare jump beyond "why" and reveals the imperfections and dead-ends before you get there. As such, this is one of the most valuable design books I've read.
Since I'm starting to pay more attention to user-interface concepts and design, I felt this book was required reading for me... Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action by Robert Hoekman, Jr. Besides offering a number of excellent concepts, he does so in a manner not often seen in other books. He tells you what he was thinking and how he got to that decision point. That's the kind of insight I need to improve my skills.
Contents:
Part 1 - Getting Oriented: Designing the First Impression; Showing Your Personality; Zen and the Art of Navigation; All Links Are Not Created Equal; Getting Your Head Out of the Tag Cloud
Part 2 - Learning: Surfacing the Trigger Words; Labeling the Interface; Beyond Words and Onto Video
Part 3 - Searching: Making Suggestions; Getting Through the Results; Refining Your Search
Part 4 - Diving In: Standardizing Playback Controls; Nailing Form Layout; Conquering the Wizard; Going the Extra Mile with Inline Validation; Simplifying Long Forms; Getting Them Signed In; Counting Characters
Part 5 - Participating: Building Profiles; Editing; Making Social Connections; Designing the Obvious Blog; Inviting Discussion; Getting a Good Rating
Part 6 - Managing Information: Making RSS Meaningful; Tagging It; Getting Reorganized with Drag-and-Drop; Managing Interruptions with System Notifications
Part 7 - Moving On: Signing Off; Dusting Off Dusty Users; Letting Them Go
Conclusion: The Keys to Great Design
Hoekman is well-known for design concepts, and I tend to like what he comes up with. The difference here over other books is that he starts off with a request or issue to solve, and then takes you through his mental process that got him to the resulting solution. For instance, All Links Are Not Created Equal... The need was to create a list of links for a call-center intranet page. The idea was to somehow communicate the current issues affecting the users, in chronological order, maximum five links. I would take the normal route (which is where he started) of just putting the last five links out there. But to communicate chronological order, that wouldn't work. Then he placed numbers in front of each link (1 to 5). OK, but still "flat" as he termed it. He started trying to incorporate a concept he learned about called "ambient signifiers", or ways to communicate information based on the way it's displayed. This led him to drop the numbers and use decreasing font sizes to show order and importance. Much better, but he still wanted more. He then stumbled on an "aging" technique whereby he would not only decrease the font size, but also lighten the text color the further down you went. This combination communicated both importance and age, and was exactly the solution he was looking for. Notice that he didn't go into it with a preconceived "spec" as to how it would work. But through his mental conversation, you see both how he got there and why he made the designs that he did.
I'm perfectly happy admitting I don't know it all when it comes to design concepts. But what I don't like is to read "do it this way because I said so" material that doesn't explain why. Hoekman makes that rare jump beyond "why" and reveals the imperfections and dead-ends before you get there. As such, this is one of the most valuable design books I've read.