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GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos View Larger Image | Jeff Johnson
Morgan Kaufmann, Paperback, Published September 2007, 407 pages, ISBN 0123706432 | List Price: $49.99
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Is your application or Web site ready for prime time?
A major revision of a classic reference, GUI Bloopers 2.0 looks at user interface design bloopers from commercial software, Web sites, Web applications, and information appliances, explaining how intelligent, well-intentioned professionals make these mistakes--and how you can avoid them. While equipping you with the minimum of theory, GUI expert Jeff Johnson presents the reality of interface design in an entertaining, anecdotal, and instructive way.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Updated to reflect the bloopers that are common today, incorporating many comments and suggestions from first edition readers.
- Takes a learn-by-example approach that teaches how to avoid common errors.
- Covers bloopers in a wide range of categories: GUI controls, graphic design and layout, text messages, interaction strategies, Web site design -- including search, link, and navigation, responsiveness issues, and management decision-making.
- Organized and formatted so information needed is quickly foun, the new edition features call-outs for the examples and informative captions to enhance quick knowledge building.
- Hundreds of illustrations: both the DOs and the DON'Ts for each topic covered, with checklists and additional bloopers on gui-bloopers.com.
TABLE OF CONTENT:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 First Principles
Introduction
Basic Principle 1: Focus on the users and their tasks, not on the technology
Basic Principle 2: Consider function first, presentation later
Basic Principle 3: Conform to the users’ view of the task
Basic Principle 4: Design for the common case
Basic Principle 5: Don’t distract users from their goals
Basic Principle 6: Facilitate learning
Basic Principle 7: Deliver information, not just data
Basic Principle 8: Design for responsiveness
Basic Principle 9: Try it out on users, then fix it!
Chapter 2 GUI Control Bloopers
Introduction
Using the wrong control
Blooper 1: Confusing checkboxes and radio buttons
Blooper 2: Using a checkbox for a non-ON/OFF setting
Blooper 3: Using command buttons as toggles
Blooper 4: Using tabs as radio buttons
Blooper 5: Too many tabs
Blooper 6: Using input controls for display-only data
Blooper 7: Overusing text fields for constrained input
Using controls wrongly
Blooper 8: Dynamic menus
Blooper 9: Intolerant data fields
Blooper 10: Input fields and controls with no default
Blooper 11: Poor defaults
Blooper 12: Negative checkboxes
Chapter 3 Navigation Bloopers
Introduction
Not showing users where they are
Blooper 13: Window or page not identified
Blooper 14: Same title on different windows
Blooper 15: Window title doesn’t match command or link
Leading users astray and not showing the way
Blooper 16: Distracting off-path buttons and links
Blooper 17: Self-links
Blooper 18: Too many levels of dialog boxes
Poor search navigation
Blooper 19: Competing search boxes
Blooper 20: Poor search results browsing
Blooper 21: Noisy search results
Chapter 4 Textual Bloopers
Introduction
Uncommunicative text
Blooper 22: Inconsistent terminology
Blooper 23: Unclear terminology
Blooper 24: Bad writing
Blooper 25: Too much text
Developer-centric text
Blooper 26: Speaking Geek
Blooper 27: Calling users "user" to their face
Blooper 28: Vague error messages
Misleading text
Blooper 29: Erroneous messages
Blooper 30: Text makes sense in isolation but is misleading in the GUI
Blooper 31: Misuse (or nonuse) of "..." on command labels
Chapter 5 Graphic Design and Layout Bloopers
Introduction
Bad layout and window placement
Blooper 32: Easily missed information
Blooper 33: Mixing dialog box control buttons with content control buttons
Blooper 34: Misusing group boxes
Blooper 35: Radio buttons too far apart
Blooper 36: Labels too far from data fields
Blooper 37: Inconsistent label alignment
Troublesome typography
Blooper 39: Tiny fonts
Chapter 6 Interaction Bloopers
Introduction
Deviating from task focus
Blooper 40: Exposing the implementation to users
Blooper 41: Needless restrictions
Blooper 42: Confusable concepts
Requiring unnecessary steps
Blooper 43: Asking users for unneeded data
Blooper 44: Asking users for random seeds
Blooper 45: Pointless choice
Burdening users’ memory
Blooper 46: Hard to remember ID
Blooper 47: Long instructions that go away too soon
Taking control away from users
Blooper 49: Automatic rearrangement of display
Blooper 50: Dialog boxes that trap users
Blooper 51: "Cancel" doesn’t cancel
Chapter 7 Responsiveness Bloopers
Introduction
Common responsiveness bloopers
Blooper 52: Cursor doesn’t keep up
Blooper 53: On-screen buttons acknowledge clicks too late
Blooper 54: Menus, sliders, and scrollbars lag behind
Blooper 55: Moving and sizing operations don’t keep up
Blooper 56: Application doesn’t indicate that it is busy
Blooper 57: Application is unresponsive during internal housekeeping
Blooper 58: Long operations don’t display progress
Blooper 59: Long operations provide no way to cancel
Blooper 60: Application wastes idle time
Blooper 61: Application gives no feedback when it hangs
Blooper 62: Web site has huge images and animations
Blooper 63: Web site always reloads whole pages in response to small edits
Reasons for poor responsiveness
Reason 1: The facts about responsiveness are not widely known
Reason 2: UI designers rarely consider responsiveness during design
Reason 3: Programmers equate responsiveness with performance
Reason 4: Programmers treat user input like machine input
Reason 5: Developers use simple implementations
Reason 6: GUI software tools, components, and platforms are inadequate
Reason 7: Managers hire GUI programmers who lack the required skill
Avoiding responsiveness bloopers: Design principles
Responsiveness Principle 1: Responsiveness is not the same as performance
Responsiveness Principle 2: Processing resources are always limited
Responsiveness Principle 3: The user interface is a real-time interface
Responsiveness Principle 4: All delays are not equal: software need not do everything immediately
Responsiveness Principle 5: Software need not do tasks in the order in which they were requested
Responsiveness Principle 6: Software need not do everything it was asked to do
Responsiveness Principle 7: Human users are not computer programs
Avoiding responsiveness bloopers: Techniques
Timely feedback
Parallel problem solution
Queue optimization
Dynamic time management
Summary of responsiveness techniques
Chapter 8 Management Bloopers
Introduction
Counterproductive attitude
Blooper 64: Treating UI as low priority
Blooper 65: Misunderstanding what user interface professionals do
Blooper 66: Discounting the value of testing and iterative design
Counterproductive process
Blooper 67: Anarchic development
Blooper 68: No task expertise on the team
Blooper 69: Using poor tools and building blocks
Blooper 70: Giving programmers the fastest computers
Appendices
Appendix A: Glossary
Appendix B: How this book was usability tested
Appendix C: Task analysis of creating slide presentations—questions
Appendix D: Illustrating simplicity—the object/action matrix
Appendix E: Usability tests for every time and purpose
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Web Appendix: Color Bloopers
Blooper 71: Text hard to read on background
Blooper 72: Relying on subtle color differences
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeff Johnson is president and principal consultant at UI Wizards, Inc., a product usability consulting firm (uiwizards.com). He has worked in the field of Human-Computer Interaction since 1978--as software designer and implementer, usability tester, manager, researcher at several computer and telecommunications companies, and consultant. In the course of his career, he has written many articles, cowritten several books, and given numerous presentations on a variety of topics in Human-Computer Interaction.
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