GUI Design Book Recommendations?

jetpack writes "I've always hated writing user interfaces, and graphical user interfaces in particular. However, I suspect that is largely because I have no clue how to write a good one. I don't mean the technical aspects, like using the APIs and so on. I mean what are the issues in designing an interface that is clean, easy to understand, and easy to use? What are things to be considered? What are things to be avoided? What are good over-all philosophies of UI design? To this end, I'd like to pick up a book or two (or three) and get my learn on. I'd appreciate some book suggestions from the UI experts in the Slashdot crowd."

Comments

Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines

[amper]

Start with the original Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. Apple Computer put forth an extremely strong effort in researching basic human interaction with graphical user interfaces during the development of their products in the 1980's, and this book is still the gold standard, even if Apple themselves disregard much of its advice nowadays (mainly because Apple was taken over by the team from NeXT). Remember that when Apple was developing the Lisa and Macintosh interfaces, the general populace had never yet been exposed to this type of interaction with technology, and quite a lot of emphasis was placed on making available powerful features to expert users that were easily accessible, yet unobtrusive to novices.

Along the same lines, I would recommend the original interface guidelines manuals for many of the early graphical operating systems, especially those for early PDA's, like GO's PenPoint, Apple's Newton OS, and the manual for General Magic's Magic Cap.

All of the aforementioned books are out of print, but any serious student of interfaced design should own all of these.

Re:Depends

[sm62704]

It should combine form and functionality

Wrong. "Form follows function" is one of the main tenants of good design. Make your toaster as pretty as you like, but don't forget that its function is to make toast, with the least amount of effort for the toaster user as possible.

If you make your toaster so that it looks like a pig, fine, but if you use the pig's snout as a lever to make the bread go down, you have a shitty design. It should be obvious to the user HOW to make the bread go down.

If your user needs to RTFM, you have failed in your attempt to design well.

-mcgrew