About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design

Review
“…very informative and challenging…ought to be read by any one who makes any claim to design user interfaces. Highly recommended..” (ACCU, 13th February, 2005)

"...provides detailed and easily readable information on interaction design..." (M2 Best Books, 23 July 2003)

"developers have a lot to learn from this book..." (Managing Information, April 2004)


Review
“…very informative and challenging…ought to be read by any one who makes any claim to design user interfaces. Highly recommended..” (ACCU, 13th February, 2005)

"...provides detailed and easily readable information on interaction design..." (M2 Best Books, 23 July 2003)

"developers have a lot to learn from this book..." (Managing Information, April 2004)


Managing Information, April 2004
"developers have a lot to learn from this book..."


Book Description
First published seven years ago-just before the World Wide Web exploded into dominance in the software world-About Face rapidly became a bestseller. While the ideas and principles in the original book remain as relevant as ever, the examples in About Face 2.0 are updated to reflect the evolution of the Web.

Interaction Design professionals are constantly seeking to ensure that software and software-enabled products are developed with the end-user's goals in mind, that is, to make them more powerful and enjoyable for people who use them. About Face 2.0 ensures that these objectives are met with the utmost ease and efficiency.

Alan Cooper (Palo Alto, CA) has spent a decade making high-tech products easier to use and less expensive to build-a practice known as "Interaction Design." Cooper is now the leader in this growing field. Mr. Cooper is also the author of two bestselling books that are widely considered indispensable texts. About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design, intro-duced the first comprehensive set of practical design principles. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum explains how talented people and companies continually create aggravating high-tech products that fail to meet customer expectations.

Robert Reimann has spent the past 15 years pushing the boundaries of digital products as a designer, writer, lecturer, and consultant. He has led dozens of interaction design projects in domains including e-commerce, portals, desktop productivity, authoring environments, medical and scientific instrumentation, wireless, and handheld devices for startups and Fortune 500 clients alike. Joining Cooper in 1996, Reimann led the development and refinement of many goal-directed design methods described in About Face 2.0. He has lectured on these methods at major universities and to international industry audiences. He is a member of the advisory board of the UC Berkeley Institute of Design.


From the Back Cover
Dear Reader, In the eight years since this book was first published, the ideas that seemed do radical at first have become standard models across the industry. Many practicioners have adopted them and seen dramatic improvements in their products. This book would not have been possible without the commitment of the many organizations over the past decade that hired Cooper, my design consulting company. They demonstrated a great measure of self-confidence to break from the pack. By the same token, the many brilliant and talented people who have worked at Cooper have pushed the limits of my original thinking far beyond where I started. They have put their professional reputations on the line to prove that there is a higher standard and better ways to achieve it. In this significantly revised and expanded edition of the book, Robert Reimann and I have rewritten and reorganized every page. Together we have: Updated examples to reflect the current state of the art, and included more examples from Cooper design solutions Included references to recent technology and industry developments Added an entirely new section covering Cooper's Goal-Directed Design methods such as personas, goals, and scenarios in detail Added new chapters on visual design, as well as interaction design issues for embedded systems and the Web Added a bibliography of design reference sources Thanks for joining me in the pursuit of better software, happier programmers and designers, more successful businesses, and extremely satisfied users. Sincerely, Alan Cooper Founder & Chairman of the Board Cooper "About Face 2.0 is one of the very rare design books that's fun to read, even though it rocks fundamental beliefs and packs the page with useful information. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what the software design process should be (but usually isn't). The perspective is unique: intellectually rigorous enough for academics while remaining focused on helping practitioners. I'd recommend this book to anybody in the business." – Harley Manning, Research Director, Forrester Research


About the Author
Alan Cooper is a pioneering software inventor, programmer, designer, and theorist. He is credited with creating what many regard as the first serious business software for microcomputers, and is widely known as the "Father of Visual Basic." For the last decade, Alan’s interaction design consulting firm, Cooper, has helped companies invent powerful, usable, desirable software and improve digital product behavior through the use of Alan’s unique methodology – the Goal-Directed process. A cornerstone of this method, the use of personas, has been widely adopted since it was first described in Alan’s second book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum. A best-selling author and popular speaker, Alan is a tireless advocate for integrating design into business practice and for humanizing technology.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
When About Face was first published in 1995, the field of user interface design had barely been conceived. In Alan Cooper￯﾿ﾽs vivid words, ￯﾿ﾽa small cadre of people brave enough to hold the title User Interface Designer operated under the shadow of software engineering, rather like the tiny, quick-witted mammals that scrambled under the shadows of hulking tyrannosaurs.￯﾿ﾽ The rest is history.

For one thing, the Web took off. Even though HTML user interfaces were (and are) horribly primitive, the Web forced us to recognize that poor design kills products -- and businesses. Of course, many underlying issues of software design and behavior apply both on the Web and off. (Some even apply in ￯﾿ﾽembedded systems￯﾿ﾽ that require human interaction -- as many luxury car owners have recently discovered.)

Something else fueled the incredible growth in interaction design: Alan Cooper￯﾿ﾽs About Face itself. Not merely a manifesto, it offered practical design principles and new ways of thinking about building software for humans. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go. We could use more of Alan Cooper￯﾿ﾽs help. And here it is: About Face 2.0.

Cooper￯﾿ﾽs insights are unified by one powerful idea: organize software development around people, not technology. Meaning what? Among other things: Understand users￯﾿ﾽ goals -- not just the tasks they perform to achieve them. Design first, code second. Separate design and programming responsibilities. Design for behavior, not form -- otherwise, you￯﾿ﾽll spent months ￯﾿ﾽiterating￯﾿ﾽ out bad interactions and still wind up with a deeply flawed product.

Cooper and Robert Reimann weave together strategy and tactics -- an approach that￯﾿ﾽs as reasonable as it is rare. After all, you can￯﾿ﾽt just ￯﾿ﾽfollow a cookbook￯﾿ﾽ (or for that matter, a style guide). There￯﾿ﾽs no ￯﾿ﾽperfect dialog box￯﾿ﾽ for every user. What￯﾿ﾽs more, many crucial design issues go far deeper than the surface of a CRT. So Cooper offers powerful tools for understanding your users and how they interact with software.

But without specific, on-the-ground advice for using interface elements like buttons and drop-down boxes, you￯﾿ﾽll never get from airy theory to working software. So that￯﾿ﾽs here, too -- plenty of it.

As you￯﾿ﾽd expect, this book￯﾿ﾽs radically different from its predecessor. To begin with, it￯﾿ﾽs been reorganized to be far easier to use. Section I focuses on process and high-level ideas. What is ￯﾿ﾽgoal-directed design￯﾿ﾽ? What makes good software design? What are the best ways to observe users? How do you define ￯﾿ﾽpersonas￯﾿ﾽ: the types of users who￯﾿ﾽll use your software?

Section II introduces a powerful high-level language of interaction design. Cooper defines terms like ￯﾿ﾽsoftware posture,￯﾿ﾽ ￯﾿ﾽexcise,￯﾿ﾽ ￯﾿ﾽinflection,￯﾿ﾽ ￯﾿ﾽorchestration,￯﾿ﾽ and ￯﾿ﾽflow￯﾿ﾽ -- and brings powerful new insights to universal features like Undo and Save. You￯﾿ﾽll learn proven techniques for making software both smart and considerate (yes, you can do both); for improving data entry and retrieval; and for supporting widely diverse users.

Section III drills down to the details: mouse interactions, window behaviors, menus, controls, toolbars, and dialog boxes; eliminating errors; productive communication with users; even clearer, simpler installations. The book concludes with detailed coverage of the specific challenges of design for the Web, wireless devices; appliances; and kiosks. About Face is just about as definitive as a book on software design can be. Again. Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Dear Reader,

In the eight years since this book was first published, the ideas that seemed do radical at first have become standard models across the industry. Many practicioners have adopted them and seen dramatic improvements in their products.

This book would not have been possible without the commitment of the many organizations over the past decade that hired Cooper, my design consulting company. They demonstrated a great measure of self-confidence to break from the pack.

By the same token, the many brilliant and talented people who have worked at Cooper have pushed the limits of my original thinking far beyond where I started. They have put their professional reputations on the line to prove that there is a higher standard and better ways to achieve it.

In this significantly revised and expanded edition of the book, Robert Reimann and I have rewritten and reorganized every page. Together we have: Updated examples to reflect the current state of the art, and included more examples from Cooper design solutions Included references to recent technology and industry developments Added an entirely new section covering Cooper's Goal-Directed Design methods such as personas, goals, and scenarios in detail Added new chapters on visual design, as well as interaction design issues for embedded systems and the Web Added a bibliography of design reference sources

Thanks for joining me in the pursuit of better software, happier programmers and designers, more successful businesses, and extremely satisfied users.

Sincerely, Alan Cooper Founder & Chairman of the Board Cooper