Alston Grove

Just finished reading Joel Spolsky’s (of Joel On Software fame) book, “User Interface Design for Programmers.” There is a Slashdot review of it.

I like this book a lot. It is fun to read, amusing, and Joel tells it like it is. He presents rules for interface design, like “Every time you provide an option, you’re asking the user to make a decision.” Then he explains the rule, explores it, and illustrates it. (”The problem comes when you ask the user to make a choice that they don’t care about,” like the Setup Wizard for Windows Help: “Minimize database size, Maximize search capabilities, Custom search capabilities.” The user just wanted help on a particular task they were trying to accomplish!)

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2003 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.