Recommended Reading

• Cooper, Alan. About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. Foster City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 1995.

Chapter 17, "Direct Manipulation," describes the various forms of direct manipulation and gives details about their appearance and behavior. Chapter 18, "Drag-and-Drop," describes some of the gory details about implementing drag-and-drop functionality, including making the source, target, and drop completion visible; modal drag and drop; automatic scrolling; and "debouncing" drags so that dragging is not confused with selection.

• Microsoft Corporation. Designing for the User Experience. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1999.

See the information on general interaction techniques for a detailed description of the appearance and behavior of selection, drag and drop, automatic scrolling, and direct manipulation feedback.

• Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday, 1990.

Chapter 6, "The Design Challenge," describes how direct manipulation is a "first-person" interaction and indirect manipulation is a "third-person" interaction. When using direct manipulation, Norman observes that "I do think of myself not as using a computer but as doing the particular task. The computer is, in effect, invisible."

• Shneiderman, Ben. Designing the User Interface—Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction, Third Edition. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999.

Chapter 6, "Direct Manipulation and Visual Environments," is dedicated to direct manipulation but extends the concept to technologies such as computer-aided design, visual languages, and virtual reality. Shneiderman coined the term direct manipulation and is one of its leading proponents.