Overview

Synopsis

In "About Face", Alan Cooper -- the father of "Visual Basic" -- presents the elements of user interface design. He delves into the issues (what works, what doesn't, and why) and he describes opportunities for future improvement (and in some cases, even proposes solutions).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: The Goal

Chapter 1: Goal-Directed Design
Chapter 2: Software Design
Chapter 3: The Three Models
Chapter 4: Visual Interface Design

Part II: The Form

Chapter 5: Idioms and Affordances
Chapter 6: An Irreverent History of Rectangles on the Screen
Chapter 7: Windows-with-a-Small-w
Chapter 8: Lord of the Files
Chapter 9: Storage and Retrieval Systems
Chapter 10: Choosing Platforms

Part III: The Behavior

Chapter 11: Orchestration and Flow
Chapter 12: Posture and State
Chapter 13: Overhead and Idiocy
Chapter 14: The Secret Weapon of Interface Design

Part IV: The Interaction

Chapter 15: Elephants, Mice and Minnies
Chapter 16: Selection
Chapter 17: Direct Manipulation
Chapter 18: Drag-and-Drop

Part V: The Cast

Chapter 19: The Meaning of Menus
Chapter 20: Menus
Chapter 21: Dialog Boxes
Chapter 22: Dialog Box Etiquette
Chapter 23: Toolbars
Chapter 24: Roll the Credits, Please

Part VI: The Gizmos

Chapter 25: Imperative and Selection Gizmos
Chapter 26: Entry and Display Gizmos
Chapter 27: New Gizmos

Part VII: The Guardian

Chapter 28: The End of Errors
Chapter 29: Managing Exceptions
Chapter 30: Undo

Part VIII: The Teacher

Chapter 31: Good at What You Do
Chapter 32: Installation, Configuration and Personalization
Chapter 33: Shouldering the Burden
Chapter 34: Where Do We Go from Here?

Praises

Commendable for challenging convention and opening the reader's eyes to the possibilities. Noteworthy discussion on eliminating "excise". The content is applicable even today as software developers continue to produce software which fail to demonstrate an understanding of this book's teachings (e.g., data immunity, eliminating unnecessary error message boxes, and providing an undo facility).

The "Reference Section" (pp. 555-558) is comprised of lists of general axioms and useful design tips. Since it lacks context, it would have been nice to provide page numbers for back-reference.

Criticisms

The material may be a bit dated (or too Windows-specific) as it draws examples from Windows 3.x and the pre-release Windows 95. But that said, readers should consider the much updated "About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design" (2002).

While the author defends his right to invent words (neologisms) with new meanings, some words add little value (and rightly so, fail to enter common use), such as "buttcons" (icon buttons), "minnies" (people who really like mice), and "elephants" (people who find it very difficult to manipulate a mouse). On a positive note, neologisms, where used, are highlighted (bold over a shaded background).

Open for debate is the author's position that the roles of designer and programmer be separated to avoid a conflict of interest -- an argument that he expands upon in "The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity" (1999).

Final Analysis

The precursor to "The Inmates are Running the Asylum", "About Face" should be considered a foundation text for user interface design. Highly recommended.

Copyright

Copyright © 2003 Anthon Pang.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".