GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers (Interactive Technologies)

If you are a designer who has to explain to developers what they are doing wrong, get this book (or maybe the next edition, out soon). I loved this book for how well it explained every bad interface design blooper I had ever seen at that point & helped me understand why developers created many of these problems. It helped me explain to developers why there were better solutions & how to design them. It also contains an excellent introduction to user-centered design. It's a very well organized and valuable reference for interface designers & a great gift for any open-minded developer interested in good UI design. I'm looking forward to his next edition.

This was my first book on user interface design, and it was a great choice. It gives good information on principles and also provides specific usable information for how to use controls, etc. I found the organization of the book easy to use and enjoyed reading it.

The author of this book does a very good job of describing and illustrating common GUI design mistakes. He has categorized the problems in broad topics such as "GUI Component Bloopers" and "Interaction Bloopers", then gives concrete examples of the bloopers that occur within each broad topic. The individual bloopers are well illustrated, and examples of better approaches are given.

Even though the applications used in the book are from the nineties, they are still very applicable, since the advice given frequently transcends the tools used to build the screens. It is applicable to web applications as well.

I read through this book once, and now use it as a reference.

Don't buy this book, it refers to applications written in early '90. Today it is completely a different story.

I am a professor of computer science who offers a two-semester, senior capstone project experience in GUI programming. I have taught this course using a variety of languages and tools, and I have always found that the programming gets in the way of the principles. I have long sought a book that focuses just on the principles and around which I could sequence my lectures. GUI Bloopers fits that requirement like a glove. I use this as the primary text in my classes and supplement it with various books that supply the information needed to implement actual programs in Java and Swing. (We look at .NET, too, but the main programming environment at this time is Java.)

Contrary to some other reviewers, I find GUI Bloopers very enjoyable to read. In addition, I find that it is not at all too elementary for my students, even the first few chapters. It's amazing how many senior computer science majors don't really understand, for example, the difference between radio buttons and checkboxes, even though they use them all the time. One can't take such understanding for granted. Familiarity with a component is not the same as true knowledge of how that component is intended to be used and what users expect to happen when they interact with it. Johnson's constant reminders to test user interfaces on real users, and his discussion of the various levels of usability testing in simple terms, are invaluable lessons. The illustrations and tales from the author's consulting practice bring the principles down to earth and drive home their points effectively.

I highly recommend GUI Bloopers as a college text.