Chapter 2 -- Read Other User Interface Design Books

Chapter 2

I know it's a bit odd to start off a book about user interface development by saying that you should read other books about user interface design. What I mean, of course, is that you should read other books because it is simply not possible for an author, including me, to present in a single book everything that one should know about user interface design. I clearly do not intend to try. In fact, I believe in this idea so strongly that I've included a Recommended Reading section at the end of each chapter. To further improve your interface designs, make sure you take a look at these other sources of relevant information.

In this book, I present user interface design from the Microsoft Windows programmer's point of view. Reading this book is an excellent start, but you should try to get other points of view as well. It's important to understand user interface design from the point of view of users, user interface designers, visual and graphic designers, and designers in other fields. I also find it useful to look at user interface design from the point of view of other platforms. Even though the fundamentals of good user interface design are largely platform-independent, looking at other platforms will give you a fresh perspective. Don't avoid a user interface book just because it isn't Windows-specific. Looking at other platforms can give you ideas that otherwise might never have occurred to you. In fact, I find books that discuss the Macintosh user interface to be far more relevant to my work than books that try to apply to all platforms.

In the remainder of this chapter, I will discuss some of my favorite books on user interface design. These are the books that I have found to be the most useful, and I will present them in order of their usefulness to me. I find these books to be practical, relevant, insightful, and worthwhile. Of course, your needs might be different than mine, so you might draw other conclusions. The Recommended Reading section in this chapter presents user interface-related books that I believe are worthy of honorable mention.



Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows
Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows
ISBN: 0735605866
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 334

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net