 | American Psychological Association | |
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 | Usability Professionals Association | |
 | Human Factors & Ergonomics Society | |
HCI Books for Hardware and SoftwareThe books described here are relevant to Human Factors Design and are available from Amazon. Please let us know if you would like to suggest additional titles.
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Because of overlapping subject matter, some books may be represented more than once. The books listed here are roughly divided into the following categories:
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Titles T to Z User Interface Design Books
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by Bruce Tognazzini
December 7, 1995
Another insightful book from a key player in computer design. Always insightful, often provocative, occasionally controversial, and perpetually entertaining, Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini provides an easy read that's as accessible to lay computer users as it is to computer professionals. Includes Tog's insights on a wide range of topics from quality management to the meaning of standards.
by Thomas K. Landauer
June 6, 1996
Despite enormous investments in computers over the last twenty years, productivity in the very service industries at which they were aimed virtually stagnated everywhere in the world. If computers are not making businesses, organizations, or countries more productive, then why are we spending so much time and money on them? Cutting through a raft of technical data, Thomas Landauer explains and illustrates why computers are in trouble and why massive outlays for computing since 1973 have not resulted in comparable productivity payoffs. Citing some of his own successful research programs, as well as many others, Landauer offers solutions to the problems he describes. While acknowledging that mismanagement, organizational barriers, learning curves, and hardware and software incompatibilities can play a part in the productivity paradox, Landauer targets individual utility and usability as the main culprits. He marshals overwhelming evidence that computers rarely improve the efficiency of the information work they are designed for because they are too hard to use and do too little that is sufficiently useful. Their many features, designed to make them more marketable, merely increase cost and complexity. Landauer proposes that emerging techniques for user-centered development can turn the situation around. Through task analysis, iterative design, trial use, and evaluation, computer systems can be made into powerful tools for the service economy. Landauer estimates that the application of these methods would make computers have the same enormous impact on productivity and standard of living that were the historical results of technological advances in energy use (the steam engine, electric motors), automation in textiles and other manufacture, and in agriculture. He presents solid evidence for this claim, and for a huge benefit-to-cost ratio for user-centered design activities backed by descriptions of how to do these necessary things, of promising applications for better computer software designs in business, and of the relation of user-centered design to business process reengineering, quality, and management.
by Jakob Nielsen
October 1, 1994
An authoritative text by one of the premier researchers in usability engineering in the 1990s, Jakob Nielsen's Usability Engineering provides a landmark guide to software design that has helped bring this area of research into the mainstream of computing. "Usability" is the measurement of how easy or difficult it is to be productive with a piece of software. It often looks at the user interface--what elements appear onscreen and how efficient, confusing, and/or intuitive they are for beginning, intermediate, and advanced users. "Usability engineering" is the formal study of usability. It grew out of research on human factors, which looked at the way people interact with their environment. The best thing about this book is its concise, cut-to-the-chase approach when defining usability and ways to measure and improve it. As the author notes, in the old days of computing, documents that attempted to define usability might have over 1,000 rules. The author offers just a handful of guiding principles for creating better software that apply even today. (Published just before the Internet revolution, this book's principles still hold true for Web designers, as well as those who create more traditional applications.)
by Deborah J. Mayhew
April 15, 1999
A commitment to usability in user interface design and development offers enormous benefits, including greater user productivity, more competitive products, lower support costs, and a more efficient development process. But what does it mean to be committed to usability? Inside, a twenty-year expert answers this question in full, presenting the techniques of Usability Engineering as a series of product lifecycle tasks that result directly in easier-to-learn, easier-to-use software. You'll learn to perform a complete requirements analysis and then incorporate the resulting goals and constraints in a highly structured, iterative design and development process. This process doesn't end with installation but instead begins anew with the collection of user feedback that will guide further development. Also covered are organizational issues related to the implementation of Usability Engineering, including cost justification, project planning, and organizational structures.
by Mary Beth Rosson
October 15, 2001
You don't need to be convinced. You know that usability is key to the success of any interactive system-from commercial software to B2B Web sites to handheld devices. But you need skills to make usability part of your product development equation. How will you assess your users' needs and preferences? How will you design effective solutions that are grounded in users' current practices? How will you evaluate and refine these designs to ensure a quality product? Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction is a radical departure from traditional books that emphasize theory and address experts. This book focuses on the realities of product development, showing how user interaction scenarios can make usability practices an integral part of interactive system development. As you'll learn, usability engineering is not the application of inflexible rules; it's a process of analysis, prototyping, and problem solving in which you evaluate tradeoffs, make reasoned decisions, and maximize the overall value of your product.
by Dan G. Newman, David Newman, Dan Newman
September 1, 1999
Voice-recognition systems can be a real help to people who have to generate a lot of text and can't--or don't want to--type. The systems, though dramatically improved, still require a bit of babying to yield the best results. In Talk to Your Computer: Speech Recognition Made Easy, Dan Newman explores voice-recognition technology in generic terms (i.e., without getting very far into the details of specific software packages). He shows how to set up a workstation for voice work, how to adjust your voice for the most accurate recognition, and how to re-engineer business procedures so that they benefit most from voice-recognition software. Readers might enjoy the brief case studies of people who benefited from being able to speak to their computers. There's a nice buyer's guide to software and microphones, but the entries on the software packages are insufficient for real decision-making. This is a good book, and voice-recognition technology is sufficiently novel that Newman manages to avoid sounding boring even when he opines about how to sit at a desk. Still, Talk to Your Computer would be far better if it more fully addressed the relative merits of the top voice-recognition packages and gave some information on their configuration options--perhaps a chapter each for the various versions of IBM ViaVoice, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Philips FreeSpeech, and L&H Voice Xpress.
by Alan F. Blackwell
March 1, 2001
This book provides an introductory overview of the rapid growth in interdisciplinary research into Thinking with Diagrams. Diagrammatic representations are becoming more common in everyday human experience, yet they offer unique challenges to cognitive science research. Neither linguistic nor perceptual theories are sufficient to completely explain their advantages and applications. These research challenges may be part of the reason why so many diagrams are badly designed or badly used. This is ironic when the user interfaces of computer software and the worldwide web are becoming so completely dominated by graphical and diagrammatic representations. This book includes chapters commissioned from leading researchers in the major disciplines involved in diagrams research. They review the philosophical status of diagrams, the cognitive processes involved in their application, and a range of specialist fields in which diagrams are central, including education, architectural design and visual programming languages. The result is immediately relevant to researchers in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, as well as in applied technology areas such as human-computer interaction and information design.
by Bruce Tognazzini
January 24, 1992
From one of the foremost authorities on the design of user interfaces, this unique collection of ideas and opinions, while focusing on the Macintosh, neatly captures the underlying principles of all graphical user interfaces. Using ideas from such diverse sources as Information Theory, Carl Jung, and even professional beekeeping, the book provides a framework for achieving a deep understanding of user interface design. With humor and thought-provoking insights, Bruce Tognazzini explores the central issues of human-computer interaction, including the challenges presented by multimedia applications, agents, virtual reality, and future technologies. Drawn from his long experience of working with developers, the book provides practical guidelines for developing successful applications that users will find simple, clear, and consistent. "Tog on Interface" is fascinating reading for all those concerned with the relationship between people and computers.
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by Michael E. Wiklund
April 1, 1994
This volume investigates how major corporations, such as Microsoft, Borland, Apple, Eastman Dodak, and Silicon Graphics, address usability issues. It presents case studies of each organization, outlining their program structures, program goals, and team members' responsibilities and resources. The book also addresses how usability is marketed inside the organization and to customers, as well as the lessons learned during the course of product development efforts.
by Jakob Nielsen (Editor), Robert L. Mack (Editor)
April 25, 1994
Computer Science/Computers-Human Interaction Usability Inspection Methods is the first comprehensive, book-length work in this important new field. Designed to get you quickly up and running with the full complement of UI strategies, tools, and techniques, this extremely practical guide offers you a unique opportunity to learn them from the women and men who invented them. With the help of numerous real-life case studies, the authors give you: Step-by-step guidance on all important methods now in use, including the heuristic evaluation method, the pluralistic walkthrough method, the cognitive walkthrough method, and more Proven techniques for integrating usability inspections with other methods now in use An in-depth, comparative analysis of UI versus user testing A cost-benefit analysis of UI as compared to other approaches Program prototypes that provide UI computer support for interface designers An important resource for user interface developers, software designers, as well as graduate students and researchers.
by Carol M. Barnum
October 2, 2001
Built on a solid foundation of current research in the field, Usability Testing and Research provides a comprehensive, up-to-date perspective in this increasingly important area of technical communication. Based on the most current research in the field, this book reflects the most recent developments and studies on this topic available. Sidebars throughout the book catch the attention of the readers and highlight key concepts in the text. A chapter on web testing provides coverage of what is now the hottest area in usability testing. End of chapter discussions and exercises reinforce learning. Frequent examples of planning, conducting, and reporting usability tests present current samples of projects. An appendix on teamwork gives pertinent advice in an area neglected by other texts: building and coordinating cross-functional teams for usability testing. For those interested in usability testing and research.
by JoAnn T. Hackos, Janice C. Redish
February 9, 1998
"Hackos and Redish wisely offer us the three things we most need about user and task analysis: practical advice, practical advice, and practical advice." -Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland "This book is well written, thorough, and loaded with techniques, examples, and resources that bring analysis to everyone." -Marcia L. Conner, Director of Usability & Learnability PeopleSoft, Inc. User and Task Analysis for Interface Design helps you design a great user interface by focusing on the most important step in the process -the first one. You learn to go out and observe your users at work, whether they are employees of your company or people in customer organizations. You learn to find out what your users really need, not by asking them what they want, but by going through a process of understanding what they are trying to accomplish.
by Karel Vredenburg, Scott Isensee, Carol Righi
December 13, 2001
An integrated approach to user-centered design (UCD). It details the methods, tools and technologies for practicing UCD and contains numerous case studies that related how UCD was used in a number of real-life projects. The accompanying CD-ROM provides the practitioner with resources for introducing, deploying and optimizing UCD in their organization. User-Centered Design can make any technology product or service far more successful by optimizing your customers' total experience from purchase and unpacking through support, upgrades, and beyond. Now, for the first time, there's a practical guide to introducing, deploying, and optimizing UCD. The field's leading experts present specific methods and techniques for building products that are simpler, more elegant, more powerful, and more profitable.
by Janet M. Noyes, Christopher Baber
August 13, 1999
There has long been a need for a book which deals specifically with human factors issues and methods, and which is targeted at the computer science and engineering population; this book fills that gap. Using a model, that places the human at the centre of the system design, users are considered in terms of their cognitive and physical attributes and their social needs, and the way in which computer technology needs to be designed and evaluated in order to take account of these factors is addressed. "User-Centered Design of Systems" deals specifically with the human issues focuses primarily on the design and evaluation of computer systems from the perspective of the user, contains a judicious mix of theory and applications and contains lots of practical examples.
by Donald Norman, Stephen Draper
February 1, 1986
An early book about designing systems. Still a good collection of papers.
by Larry E. Wood
December 2, 1997
Although numerous sources document aspects of user-centered design, there are few references that consider how a designer transforms the information gathered about users and their work into an effective user interface design. This book explains just how designers bridge that gap. A group of leading experts in GUI design describe their methods in the context of specific design projects, and while the projects, processes, and methods vary considerably, the common theme is building a bridge between user requirements and user interface design.
by Constantine Stephanidis
January 1, 2001
Advocating a concept called "universal design" (or "design for all"), this volume calls for an "inclusive and proactive" approach seeking to accommodate diversity in the users and usage contexts of interactive products, applications, and services, starting with the design phase of the development life-cycle. Contributors to the volume's 30 chapters describe various aspects of this approach, including the scientific, technical, technological, socioeconomic, and policy issues involved in the attainment of universal access when developing interactive software. Sections cover introductory matters; dimensions of human-computer interactions (HCI) that are relevant to the principles of universal access; special needs and enabling technologies; design; software technologies and architectural models; and a review of the efforts of a major industrial software vendor to provide accessibility hooks into mainstream technologies.
by Konrad Baumann, Bruce Thomas
May 1, 2001
This simple and manageable guide to user interface design is written for the technically knowledgeable professional in industry working on product development and the decision process. It presents a catalog of input and output devices for user interfaces and provides a set of guidelines for the user interface, adding material on interaction design, menu structures, the move from usability to pleasure, the user interface design process, sound design, advanced input devices and voice interfaces. Each chapter or sub-chapter stands alone, so the book can be used as a reference handbook. Contributions come from several human factors specialists working with Philips and in academia. Several case studies are given from well-known companies showing examples of good UI design, and brief summaries and references to research are provided.
by Debbie Stone, Caroline Jarrett, Mark Woodroffe, Shailey Minocha
March 22, 2005
Whether you are a professional new to the user-centered design field, or an experienced designer who needs to learn the fundamentals of user interface design and evaluation, this book can lead the way. What will you get from this book? Based on a course from the Open University, UK which has been taught to over a thousand professionals and students, this book presents an overview of the field. It illustrates the benefits of a user-centered approach to the design of software, computer systems, and web sites, and provides a clear and practical discussion of requirements gathering; developing interaction design from user requirements; and user interface evaluation. The book's coverage includes established HCI topicsfor example, visibility, affordance, feedback, metaphors, mental models, and the likecombined with practical guidelines for contemporary designs and current trends, which makes for a winning combination. You get a clear presentation of ideas, illustrations of concepts, using real-world applications. This book will help you develop all the skills necessary for iterative user-centered design, and provides a firm foundation for user interface design and evaluation on which to build.
by Joel Spolsky
June 26, 2001
This brilliantly readable and relentlessly practical book provides just what programmers need to know (TM) about user interface design. Written with programmers in mind, but without assuming prior knowledge of any specific language, "User Interface Design for Programmers" offers an alternative to the "laundry lists" of actual bugs or rants against "bad UI" now available. Programmers will find here the numerous examples and step-by-step guidance they need to improve common problems. From the Introduction: "Most of the hard-core programmers I know hate user interface programming. This surprises me, because I find UI programming to be quintessentially easy, straightforward, and fun. "It's easy because you usually don't need algorithms more sophisticated than how to center one rectangle in another. It's straightforward because when you make a mistake, you immediately see it and can correct it. It's fun, because the results of your work are immediately visible. You feel like you are sculpting the program directly. "I think most programmers' fear of UI programming comes from their fear of doing UI design. They think that UI design is like graphics design: the mysterious process by which creative, latte-drinking, all-dressed-in-black people with interesting piercings produce cool looking artistic stuff. Programmers see themselves as analytic, logical thinkers: strong at reasoning, weak on artistic judgment. So they think they can't do UI design. "Actually, I've found UI design to be quite easy and quite rational. It's not a mysterious matter that requires a degree from an art school and a penchant for neon-purple hair. There is a rational way to think about user interfaces with some simple, logical rules that you can apply anywhere to improve the interfaces of the programs you work on. "This book is not 'Zen and the Art of UI Design.' It's not art, it's not Buddhism, it's just a set of rules. A way of thinking rationally and methodically. This book is designed for programmers.
by Dan R., Jr. Olsen
November 1, 1991
This book brings together for the first time all major approaches to User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) development from a programmer's algorithmic perspective. The various models for describing dialogs and generating user interfaces are discussed within the framework of a general UIMS architecture. Extensive examples are included to reinforce the concepts presented and applications for each approach are described. This guide will provide professional programmers with a understanding of the algorithms necessary to implement UIMSs. Readers without a programming background can use this book without prior user interface experience.
by Michael H. Cohen, James P. Giangola, Jennifer Balogh
February 1, 2004
This book is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to voice user interface (VUI) design. The VUI is perhaps the most critical factor in the success of any automated speech recognition (ASR) system, determining whether the user experience will be satisfying or frustrating, or even whether the customer will remain one. This book describes a practical methodology for creating an effective VUI design. The methodology is scientifically based on principles in linguistics, psychology, and language technology, and is illustrated here by examples drawn from the authors' work at Nuance Communications, the market leader in ASR development and deployment. The book begins with an overview of VUI design issues and a description of the technology. The authors then introduce the major phases of their methodology. They first show how to specify requirements and make high-level design decisions during the definition phase. They next cover, in great detail, the design phase, with clear explanations and demonstrations of each design principle and its real-world applications. Finally, they examine problems unique to VUI design in system development, testing, and tuning. Key principles are illustrated with a running sample application. Produced in 1911, Rex was among the few commercial successes in earlier days of speech recognition. Voice User Interface Design reveals the design principles and practices that produce commercial success in an era when effective ASRs are not toys but competitive necessities.
by John Markoff
April 21, 2005
Most histories of the personal computer begin with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Apple in 1976, but while hanging out at SAIL in the mid 1970s, and at the First West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 I heard highly attenuated versions of the folklore that Markoff has only now, after nearly 30 years, run to ground. Conventional histories of the PC make passing reference to the MITS Altair (1974) before going on the talk about the Apple, the IBM PC (1981) and what followed. The more sophisticated would conspiratorially tell the story of how Steve Jobs "stole the idea" for the Macintosh from Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) as they were "fumbling the future", and nearly everyone knew that Bill Gates then stole the ideas from Apple. But the truth of those half-heard folktales from my youth is that nearly every concept in the personal computer predates all of this, in a delightfully picaresque tale that starts in the late 1950s and weaves together computers, LSD, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the Vietnam War and dozens of characters. John Markoff, veteran technology reporter for the New York Times, is the first to comprehensively tell this story in his new book What The Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. Markoff, best known for Cyberpunk and Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, explodes the conventional notion that the PC replaced the mini-computer in the same way that the mini-computer replaced the mainframe -- by a sort of evolutionary selection within the computer business, by persistently investigating the roots of the PC its unsung pioneers, its user interface, and the culture of open-source software in the San Francisco drug and anti-war culture of the late 1950s and 1960s.
by Paul Dourish
October 1, 2001
Computer science as an engineering discipline has been spectacularly successful. Yet it is also a philosophical enterprise in the way it represents the world and creates and manipulates models of reality, people, and action. In this book Paul Dourish addresses the philosophical bases of human-computer interaction. He looks at how what he calls "embodied interaction"--an approach to interacting with software systems that emphasizes skilled, engaged practice rather than disembodied rationality--reflects the phenomenological approaches of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other twentieth-century philosophers. The phenomenological tradition emphasizes the primacy of natural practice over abstract cognition in everyday activity. Dourish shows how this perspective can shed light on the foundational underpinnings of current research on embodied interaction. He looks in particular at how tangible and social approaches to interaction are related, how they can be used to analyze and understand embodied interaction, and how they could affect the design of future interactive systems.
Titles T to Z User Interface Design Books
