Recommended Reading

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

  Chapter 5, "Idioms and Affordances," presents an insightful discussion comparing idiom paradigm interfaces to metaphor paradigm interfaces. Unlike metaphors, idioms are not based on the real world and require the user to learn the idiom's attributes. In general, he prefers idiomatic learning: "Searching for that magic metaphor is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in user interface design." Metaphors "have a host of other problems as well, including the simple fact that there aren't enough metaphors to go around, they don't scale well, and the ability of users to recognize them is questionable." Also, "There is an infinity of idioms waiting to be invented, but only a limited set of metaphors waiting to be discovered. Metaphors give first-timers a penny's worth of value but cost them many dollars' worth of problems as they continue to use the software." This is good stuff. He also blasts the General Magic MagiCap user interface, which in my opinion is one of the worst user interfaces ever invented. Why? Because the designers of this interface placed their needs as designers ahead of helping the user get his work done. This interface takes metaphors to a ridiculous extreme. Chapter 11, "Orchestration and Flow," discusses flow and how invisible user interfaces help users maintain their flow. Chapter 30, "Undo," presents useful information on why undo is important and tips on how to implement it.

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

  Chapter 5, "Transparency, or Death Comes to Bob the Waiter," makes an interesting comparison of an invisible user interface (in his words, a transparent interface) to a good waiter. I find this simple analogy very helpful. The same information can be found in Apple Directions, November/December 1992.

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

  Chapter 1, "An Introduction to Visual Interface Design," discusses some of the properties of an invisible user interface; Chapter 6, "Graphic Information Design Principles," discusses basic design principles, including the use of color and fonts; and Chapter 8, "Affordances, Realism, and Dimension," presents useful information about the use of 3-D effects, especially mistakes to avoid.