About Face
by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, Christopher Noessel · first published 2014
70% recommend30% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Introduction to interaction design and UX covering history, context, and how to work methods into a real project; recommended as a starting point for new designers and anyone learning to design around users.
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Check out "About Face" by Alan Cooper et al. A well respected interaction designer was so kind to give me her 1st edition many years ago and I still find myself coming back to it regularly. New and updated 4th edition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781118766...
on “The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over” ↗Reading Alan Cooper's "About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design" made a big impression on me; UI work is really fascinating and rewarding, but it is honoured almost exclusively in the breach thesedays. I can understand companies knocking up intranet based applications…
on “Bad UI is causing people to get scammed” ↗…kept getting misshelved. “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug is also very good. Neither of these is a specialist’s tome. “Mental Models” by Indi Young is good, one level deeper, mostly about humans. “About Face” by Alan Cooper is very thorough on the practitioner side, more of a college textbook, with lots of examples and pedagogy.
on “Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?” ↗"About Face" by Alan Cooper is far-and-away the best book I've read on interaction design. Don Norman's books are also worth a read (though more difficult to immediately apply to creating software). For general…
on “Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design” ↗I got a lot out of Alan Cooper's book About Face back when I was developing more desktop GUI applications. I'm not sure how relevant it would be for your purposes, given that it predates the rise in popularity of web-based applications.
on “Good books on UI/UX design?” ↗…least skimming it. 2. Design Patterns by Erich Gamma et al http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?DesignPatterns Also, definitely have a look at Peter Norvig's slides: http://norvig.com/design-patterns 3. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper 4. Writing Effective Use Cases by Alistair Cockburn Websites: 1. Obviously, HN, :) 2. http://highscalability.com/ It may look like a huge undertaking,…
on “Ask HN: How can I learn to architect a production web app?” ↗If you're willing to put in the effort for some serious study, then try these 2 books. They worked very well for me. a. About Face 3 by Alan Cooper b. Contextual Design by Karen Holtzblatt These two will set you up.
on “Ask HN: How to learn design and UX as a software engineer?” ↗About Face[0] by Alan Cooper about UI design. Refactoring[1] by Martin Fowler. On Lisp[2] by PG. [0]https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Des... [1]https://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Existing-Addiso...…
on “Ask HN: What is a must read for a developer without a computer science degree?” ↗…https://www.amazon.com/Laws-UX-Psychology-Products-Services/... Think First: My No-Nonsense Approach to Creating Successful Products, Memorable User Experiences + Very Happy Customers https://www.amazon.com/Think-First-No-Nonsense-Successful-Ex... About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Des... I hope this helps, good luck:)
on “Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?” ↗About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, Christopher Noessel, with Jason Csizmadi and Doug LeMoine extensively covers how to talk with users.
on “Ask HN: What are the best books on talking to users?” ↗One of the most influential books I ever read was About Face by Alan Cooper. What he said about this bad modal dialogue is that you should simply not ask the user, and let them undo later. This was heresy at the time, but turned out to be the native user flow…
on “Yes/No/Cancel causes Aspirin sales to soar” ↗…the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity.) I'd read about that book by him (Alan Cooper [1]), but haven't read it yet. But I did buy and read another of his books, About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, some years ago. I thought it was good. It's about user interface design that makes sense for humans. I still remember one point where he said that in a scrollbar, having both the arrows at one end, instead…
on “The tech industry push to get coding into American classrooms” ↗…links with pdfs), Don Norman - Design of Everyday Things https://archive.org/details/DesignOfEverydayThings Bill Buxton - Input Manuscript http://www.billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html Alan Cooper - About Face http://feiramoderna.net/download/pos-positivo/COOPER-Alan/Ab... Vignelli - The Vignelli Canon http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf Bill Buxton - Sketching User Experiences http://bscw.wineme.fb5.uni-siegen.de/pub/bscw.cgi/d807887/Sk...…
on “Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?” ↗…with design quite a bit (making things pleasant to use, getting rid of clutter etc), so books like Joel Spolsky's user interface design for programmers, Steve Krug's Don't make me think, or Alan Cooper's About Face can help with design, too. - Robin Williams: The Non-designer's design book. Short, to the point, and teaches the basic principles. - Blogs: Smashing Magazine and Six Revisions.
on “Ask HN: Best resources to learn about design?” ↗Alan Cooper's About Face. It's quite old - the latest ed is from 2007 - but it is still very good at introducing goal-oriented design and lots of practical design concepts.
on “Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?” ↗