Recommended Reading

• Arlov, Laura. GUI Design for Dummies. Foster City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 1997.

Chapter 5, "Pin Up Those Super Models," discusses conceptual models, primarily with a case study. Chapter 6, "How Users Get Around: Navigation Models," covers how to improve navigation models, especially in database programs. Chapter 11, "Making Your GUI Easy to Understand," describes how to make interfaces easy to use by providing feedback, affordance, mapping, and metaphors.

• Bickford, Peter. Interface Design: The Art of Developing Easy-to-Use Software. Chestnut Hill, MA: Academic Press, 1997.

Chapter 1, "Constraints," discusses how constraints reduce complexity by using an example of how constraints are used to eliminate user errors by Japanese vending machines. Chapter 11, "Speed and Feedback," describes the importance of providing feedback to improve the perceived speed of software. Chapter 38, "Apocrypha and Secret Lore: Interface Oddities and Ephemera," attempts to justify the Macintosh design of having users drag disks to the trash to eject them.

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

Chapter 3, "The Three Models," discusses conceptual models and the problems with basing user interfaces on the implementation model. Chapter 5, "Idioms and Affordances," discusses affordance, particularly with respect to our instinctive understanding of how to use things with our hands, and problems with using metaphors in user interface design. Chapter 8, "Lord of the Files," discusses the problems with the conceptual model of the file system, which Cooper believes is based too closely on the implementation model.

• Howlett, Virginia. Visual Interface Design for Windows. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996.

Chapter 7, "An Introduction to the Psychology of Perception," discusses how users perceive, focusing on vision, mental models, and cultural differences. Chapter 8, "Affordance, Realism, and Dimension," considers affordance, realism vs. abstraction, and the use of 3-D as an affordance.

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

Chapter 5, "Usability Heuristics," discusses mappings, conceptual models, and metaphors and shows how metaphors can mislead users by giving them false expectations. This chapter also discusses feedback, especially as it relates to response time.

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

Discusses how users learn to use everyday things through their design attributes of visibility, affordance, natural mappings, constraints, conceptual models, and feedback. Discusses other design attributes as well, such as simplicity, consistency, forgiveness, and conformance to standards. Chapter 2, "The Psychology of Everyday Actions," presents the seven states of action that ties all these design attributes together.

• Tognazzini, Bruce. Tog on Interface. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1992.

Chapter 17, "Conceptual Models," gives guidelines on how to create conceptual models. He stresses the importance of simplicity, memorability, familiarity, and focusing on the user's needs.