Skip to Content
Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems
book

Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems

by Jef Raskin
March 2000
Intermediate to advanced
256 pages
6h 43m
English
Addison-Wesley Professional
Content preview from Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems

3-4. Visibility and Affordances

On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Source unknown

Whether a product is a handheld two-way radio or a computer's desktop, it is not always clear what functions are available, what they do, or how they are accessed. You should be able to use your senses to easily discover both what abilities are available and how they are to be operated.

An interface feature is visible if it either is currently accessible to a human sense organ—usually the eyes, although this discussion applies also to other sensory modalities—or was so recently perceived that it has not yet faded from short-term memory. If a feature is not visible, we say that it is invisible. For an interface to work well, “[j]ust the right things have to be ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Conceptual Design for Interactive Systems

Conceptual Design for Interactive Systems

Avi Parush

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0201379376Purchase book