Designing Interfaces, 2nd Edition

Introduction to the Second Edition

In the five years since the first edition of Designing Interfaces was published, many things have changed.

Most user interface designers—who might now play the roles of user experience (UX) designers, or interaction designers, or information architects, or any of several other titles—now do their work on the Web. Countless websites, web services, web-delivered software, blogs, and online stores need good design, and it’s becoming easier and easier to deliver these finished products in ridiculously short turnaround times. Many of these are highly interactive, but even traditional websites—static and straightforward in the past—now contain components that are dynamic and interactive, such as video players and social network content. There’s a lot of designing going on!

Compared to a few years ago, not as much of that designing is being done for desktop applications. Of course, all of us technology users depend upon the complex software installed on our laptops and desktops. Our email clients, browsers, document editors, domain-specific software, and operating systems are still important parts of our online lives. But many aspects of their interface designs have stabilized. As a result, since the early 2000s, the audience for design books has shifted away from desktop design toward web-based design.

Here’s another change: mobile design, which was still immature in 2005, has flourished. With iPhones and other complex mobile devices now spreading everywhere, ...