Designing Interfaces

AUDIENCE

If you design user interfaces in any capacity, you might find this book useful. It's intended for people who work on:

• Desktop applications

• Web applications or "rich internet applications" (RIAs)

• Highly interactive web sites

• Software for handhelds, cell phones, or other consumer electronics

• Turnkey systems, such as kiosks

• Operating systems

The list might also include traditional web sites such as corporate home pages, but I deliberately did not focus on web sites. They are amply covered by the existing literature, and talking more about them here seems redundant. Also, most of them don't have the degree of interactivity taken for granted in many patterns; there's a qualitative difference between a "read-only" site and one that actually interacts with its users.

Of course, profound differences exist among all these design platforms. However, I believe they have more in common than we generally think. You'll see examples from many different platforms in these patterns, and that's deliberate—they often use the same patterns to achieve the same ends.

This book isn't Design 101; it's more like Design 225. As mentioned earlier, it's expected that you already know the basics of UI design, such as available toolkits and control sets, concepts like drag-and-drop and focus, and the importance of usability testing and user feedback. If you don't, some excellent books listed in the references can get you started with the essentials.

Specifically, this book targets the following audiences:

• Software developers who need to design the UIs that they build.

• Web page designers who are now asked to design web apps or sites with more interactivity.

• New interface designers and usability specialists.

• More experienced designers who want to see how other designs solve certain problems; the examples can serve as a sourcebook for ideas.

• Professionals in adjacent fields, such as technical writing, product design, and information architecture.

• Managers who want to understand what's involved in good interface design.

• Open-source developers and enthusiasts. This isn't quite "open-source design," but the idea here is to open up interface design best practices for everyone's benefit.