Designing a good interface isn't easy. Users demand software that is well-behaved, good-looking, and easy to use. Your clients or managers demand originality and a short time to market. Your UI technology -- web applications, desktop software, even mobile devices -- may give you the tools you need, but little guidance on how to use them well.

UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence.

Designing Interfaces captures those best practices as design patterns -- solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand. Each pattern contains practical advice that you can put to use immediately, plus a variety of examples illustrated in full color. You'll get recommendations, design alternatives, and warnings on when not to use them.

Each chapter's introduction describes key design concepts that are often misunderstood, such as affordances, visual hierarchy, navigational distance, and the use of color. These give you a deeper understanding of why the patterns work, and how to apply them with more insight.

A book can't design an interface for you -- no foolproof design process is given here -- but Designing Interfaces does give you concrete ideas that you can mix and recombine as you see fit. Experienced designers can use it as a sourcebook of ideas. Novice designers will find a roadmap to the world of interface and interaction design, with enough guidance to start using these patterns immediately.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 54 Ratings

This book is great for anyone designing any type of interface - 2009-09-27
Reviewer Rating:
Jenifer Tidwell, an interaction designer and software developer for The Mathworks, makes it easy for people from all different designing backgrounds (beginner to expert) to learn how to design an effective and "good" interface in her book "Designing Interfaces." Her book is presented in two parts; the first section is a broad look at all types of interfaces:

1. What Users Do
2. Organizing the Content
3. Getting Around
4. Organizing the Page
5. Doing Things

The second half of the book deals with more specific idioms. This section includes chapters on:

6. Showing Complex Data
7. Getting Input from Users
8. Builders and Editors
9. Making It Look Good

In every chapter, Tidwell helps the reader plan out and develop their interface by starting off with a brief introduction of the topic, and then going into lots of "patterns" (tool) that correspond with the topic. With each pattern, she describes what it is, when to use it, why it is important and how to use it. She then follows these up with many real world examples.

I found the structure of this book very beneficial. In each chapter, I could expect to learn the basics behind a topic (like what goes into organizing a website's content) and then learn the "patterns" on how to apply what I just learned about to the real world (and more specifically my interface). Also, the book has many text and picture examples of each "pattern." I happen to be a very visual learner, and found that the pictures helped me with any confusion I may have had understanding what the author was talking about.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the last chapter "Making It Look Good." As a person who loves designing ads, I found this chapter a very useful guide on how to approach making an interface (a website in my case) visually appealing and unique. The multiple examples on how one site can look completely different was a great addition.

That being said, the book does have a few disappointing aspects. While the author does a good job of covering many aspects of interface design, it is not possible to get into much depth with every topic. The author does a good job at addressing this issue by telling the reader that there are plenty of other books that go into great detail for the different topics. I also feel that some of the topics are very basic, even for a beginner like myself. This might make more expert designers irritated, or felt down-talked to. But the beauty of it being in a book is that the reader can skip over the parts that they already know.

All in all, I give this book 5/5 stars. It is interesting, to the point, well written, and a great book for designers of all skill levels. If you are designing an interface, I would recommend buying this book to have as a tool by your desk.

Great foundation on interface design - 2009-06-30
Reviewer Rating:
This is the second book I have bought about interface design and it is the best one to date. I really like how the book breaks down the sections by devices and subject matter. It covers interfaces from desktops, mobile devices, to the internet. One area it did not talk about was console interfaces(like the Xbox360 or Wii). If you want to learn anything about how people manipulate game software, this book is not for you. That is where I give it 4 stars.

Much of interface design is about common trends and assumptions people have when they get on a device and need to manipulate it. This book really outlines those "mental models" and explains them with diagrams and pictures. Being in web design, I know that the mobile world is really taking off, so using design patterns from mobile devices and meshing them with web design is where design trends are going. Rules and habits are different on various devices, and this book really illuminates those areas if you haven't had much experience with software development or mobile usability testing.

Bottom Line: Great foundation book to have a better understanding of how to design for different devices.

practically useless - 2009-05-21
Reviewer Rating:
This book may be helpful to people who have never used a computer before, but there's really very little new information here.

Anyone using the web or just about any software has seen the basic UI elements discussed in the book and should be familiar enough with them to know how they work.

The most irritating element of the book -- apart from the lack of useful information -- is the constant referring of sections later in the book. All too often one section will mention a method or a device that isn't described until a later chapter, making it very difficult to follow.

Overall: just bad.

Does What It Was Written To Do - 2009-11-03
Reviewer Rating:
I had to get this book for one of my classes and I will admit it is not a book for experts in the field of "Designing Interfaces", but it's great for beginners and good for anyone less than an expert but more than a beginner.

Tidwell brings design patterns you see daily on the web and in programs like Microsoft Word to your attention and then gives them a name, tells you how to use it, when to use it, and why to and not to use it.

I liked the organization of the information, and although the font is a little tough to read with the san serif font used but it's not a big enough problem to keep me from reading it.

I feel that in the end the book gave what her description promised, It's gonna go next to Steve Kuges book "Don't Make Me Think" and Tuftes book "Visual Explinations" on my book shelf.

Required for anyone involved in UI design - 2009-04-10
Reviewer Rating:
Designing Interfaces is worth its weight in gold. The detail and thought that went into this book is outstanding. You'll learn the patterns, when to use them, when not to, and most importantly, why. You'll learn how to think about each interface element and why it either works for a given situation or not. This is a skill anybody involved in interface design would appreciate and should know how to do.

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