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Review by : John Wetherbie
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>
Designing Interfaces is not like most books about interface design. It presents "patterns" that the author has seen in Interaction Design and developing user interfaces. The ninety-four patterns are divided into categories with each category/chapter having a brief introduction and overview.
The patterns are somewhat akin to those found in the Gang of Four's Design Patterns book. The first twelve are brief descriptions of how people interact with various aspects of interfaces. The remaining patterns have what, use when, why, how, and examples sections. The how section presents a scenario or design choices for how the pattern can be used. There are multiple figures illustrating the pattern and references to related patterns.
The book's good points are the brief but good content of the chapter overviews, the how sections of each pattern, and the illustrations.
My complaints about the book are minor. When one pattern referenced another I would have liked the page number of the referenced pattern to be listed instead of just the name. I found the gray color of the text a bit tough on the eyes and the font size for the figure descriptions a bit small.
One of the major benefits of the Design Patterns book was that it provided a common vocabulary with which to discuss and communicate software designs. It will be interesting to see if this book has the same effect on interaction and interface design.
Full disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of the book for review.
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