Conventions Used in This Book

In this book, we've made use of several conventions that hopefully clarify some of the more important points and help provide a richer, more useful experience for the reader.

Platforms

This book is about designing digital interactive products. The majority of today's PCs run Windows and, as a result, that is where the greatest need exists for understanding how to create effective, goal-directed user interfaces.

Having said this, most of the material in this book transcends platforms. It is equally applicable to all desktop platforms—MacOS, Motif, and others—and the majority of it is relevant even for more divergent platforms such as kiosks, handhelds, embedded systems, and others.

Examples

The majority of examples in this book are from the Microsoft Office suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Internet Explorer; Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator; and a few others. We have tried to stick with examples from these mainstream programs for two reasons. First, readers are likely to be at least slightly familiar with the examples. Second, it's important to show that the user interface design of even the most finely honed products can be significantly improved with a Goal-Directed approach. We have included a few examples from Mac OS X as well, in places where they were particularly illustrative.

A few examples in this new edition come from now moribund software or OS versions. These examples make particular design points that the authors felt were useful enough to retain in this edition. The vast majority of examples are from contemporary software and OS releases.

Design aphorisms and terms

One of the things lacking in this new field of interaction design is a set of terms and principles that designers, programmers, and usability practitioners can use to communicate together concerning the design of behavior. We have attempted in this book to provide the start of what we hope will become an evolving list of terms and principles that practitioners will use and expand upon as they see fit.

The principles, or aphorisms if you prefer, encapsulate wisdom derived from dozens of design engagements. These are divided into two categories, each identified by a unique icon, as shown here.

AXIOM 

Buy low, sell high.

In this book, axioms refer to broad principles of interaction design. Pose these axioms to yourself when you find yourself stuck on tough conceptual problems. All the axioms are gathered into Appendix A.

DESIGN TIP 

Keep your powder dry.

Some aphorisms aren't as broad in scope; but they are, nonetheless, quite useful. When you are working with particular design elements described in the book, the design tips provide helpful advice. The design tips are gathered into Appendix B.

When mentioned for the first time, terms with specific meanings for the interaction design practitioner are highlighted in the text in boldface. Some of these terms are the authors' neologisms, but many of them were coined by others or are in common use.