Recommended Reading

• Capucciati, Maria R. "Putting Your Best Face Forward: Designing an Effective User Interface." Microsoft Systems Journal, February 1993.

  This article states, "User feedback should be analyzed for trends and common threads rather than taken at face value. Sometimes the best feedback comes not from users, but from looking at other products and talking with people who have a similar vision for the application."

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

  Chapter 34, "Where Do We Go from Here?", states "One of the central tenets of usability engineering is that design should be `user-centered.' This certainly sounds good, but it has serious problems. The biggest problem is that it is widely interpreted to mean that your users can tell you how to design software. Saying `user-centered software design' is like saying `fish-centered aquarium design.' You wouldn't ask the fish, would you?"

• Cooper, Alan. "Goal-Directed Software Design." Dr. Dobb's Journal, September 1996.

  In this article, Alan Cooper presents his method of user-centered design called "Goal-Directed Design™." The approach is "goal-directed" as opposed to "task-directed," since achieving the user's goals is ultimately more important than performing a set of tasks. He makes a very convincing case using a goal-directed group-calendar program as an example. In this case, he notes that one of the tasks of the program is to set meetings but the user's goal is to avoid meetings.

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

  See the chapter on design principles and methodology for a brief introduction to user-centered design, from the point of view of both user interface design principles and the design process itself.

• Nielsen, Jakob. Usability Engineering. Chestnut Hill, MA: AP Professional, 1993.

  This book contains valuable information about user-centered design, user testing, prototyping, how to interpret user feedback, and usability in general. If you want more information about developing a process for usability, this is the place to turn.

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

  Chapter 2, "The Psychology of Everyday Actions," gives a good account of how users don't always report problems when they blame themselves for mistakes. User mistakes are often attributed to user error instead of a bad user interface.