Design Guidlines Then and Now
936549
Dreyfuss' "Designing for People" proved an inspiring collection of anecdotes and stories exemplifying the true functions of an industrial designer.  Nostalgia combined with some sage-like advice, Dreyfuss reminds the designer of his or her role in the product development field.  To paraphrase Dreyfuss: the industrial designer is a person who wears many hats; one who is part artist, engineer, businessman, researcher, politician, builder, and guinea pig.  His assessment is accurate and proven, and his words of wisdom should be used as a guideline for all industrial designers in modern times.

That said, Dreyfuss does tend to come across very matter-of-factly at times, leaving little gray area in his black and white world.  As a result Mr. Dreyfuss sides with the Bauhaus approach where form follows function-indeed,  he often mentions the resulting form of a product as a side-note, if he mentions it at all.  Whereas this may be an annoyance for some readers, the lessons you take away from his life experiences are truly informative and insightful.

As the amount of 3D design in product development grows, designers today are faced with the difficulty of "skin designing" verses thoughtful, foundation-based designing.  If nothing else, this book should serve as inspiration for those of us in the field to design based on function and aesthetics-we have a duty and responsibility to client and society to base designs on research and thoughtfulness, not simply the known tools in a computer program.  In any case, DFP should be on the required reading list for industrial design students to teach the history and guidelines of our profession.  "Designing for People" serves as not only a reminder of the way it used to be, but it also inspires the designer to believe how it should be now.
2264053
A good older book showing vintage fashions from a time in the past where practicality was key and using what was available was mandatory.  I am using the designs shown to help with my doll making.  A good historical reference.
4288224
Marc Silver's extensive experience in designing user interfaces is evident in this highly readable book. The numerous tips scattered throughout offer easy take-away value and the text gives you the "why" as well as the "how" of designing user interfaces. This approach will give you a foundation for design discussions with others involved in the software and web site development process including clients, project managers, programmers, quality assurance and support personnel.

 As a practicing software development professional, I found the chapter on Designing for Accessibility particularly relevant to current Section 508 compliance issues with our clients (textbook publishers). There are also numerous design practices that we use in our daily work that are explained in the Specifying the Design chapter. The nuts-and-bolts of using the various interface elements are well covered in the Menus and Controls and Designing Usable Navigation chapters. Consistent with a real-world view, there are few absolute rules, but instead intelligent discussion of the trade-offs involved in making design decisions.

 Although you'll want to have a more complete reference for starting a business, the final chapter on the User Interface Designer in Professional Practice provides helpful advice and tips on subjects such as proposal writing, maintaining long-term business relationships, and even filing practices.

 You'll find this book very useful if you're a student looking for practical advice on user interface design in the real world. If you're a practicing professional you'll pick up some valuable tips that you'll use regularly in your work.
2666769
"Great Design" is a good, coffee-table style book which provides an interesting overview of design over the last century and a half.  Through an abundance of photographs and an appropriate amount of accompanying text, Philip Wilkinson shows noteworthy examples of style/design commencing in 1860 and moving into present time.  He outlines the development of modern design including product packaging, furniture, graphics, industrial and textiles.

Photos dominate this book, as is appropriate for a coffee-table style book on design, but there is adequate text.  Wilkinson provides more than one hundred examples of design, and gives profiles of designers and design movements.  This is a good book and one which provides an engaging, but not ovewhelming overview of some noteworthy designs over the years.
2818293
Why review a seven year-old design book, one ostensibly before the widespread adoption of the Web?  Because design principles existed long before the web, and because this book is both fundamental to learning about design, and directly applicable to Web design.
Four principles of composition and a handy set of categories and contrasts of typography make this simple book a pleasure to read.  The author starts out with the story of how sometimes there are things of which we are unaware, but once we recognize, we see everywhere.  Design patterns and elements are everywhere around us (both good and bad), but we simply don't recognize them, don't have words for them, and are unable to *see* them.  This uncomplicated, yet powerful set of design principles can open the eyes of the design-blind.
394307
In modern computer languages such as Java, creating Objects is a trivial task and almost as easy is making small numbers of Objects work together.  However, there is a world of a difference between coding simple programs  and developing commercial grade applications.  Complexity increases  exponentially.  Something more is required in order to keep a handle on  things.  Design Patterns largely provide that answer.
Initially, this  book is daunting.  At first I couldn't make head nor tail of what they were  talking about.  This revealed serious shortcomings in my own knowledge that  I had to put right but once done and starting with simple patterns (such as  the Singleton) things began to make sense.  Persevere and there is an awful  lot of knowledge to be gained here.  The intelligent application of Design  Patterns into complex systems pays off hansomely in the long run.
My only  critisisms of the book?  Fairly minor really.  The diagrams are all  pre-UML.  In fact they are they're own version of OMT diagrams.  And an  over reliance on Smalltalk for providing examples.
In the five years  this book has been published much new work has been done on Design Patterns  and it's time for a new edition of the book.  Nevertheless, there aren't  many computing books that are five years old and still of prime relevance.  This is one.
2523102
This is a fine addition to any software developer's library. It's a little on the dated side, though. If you haven't read Code Complete, I would suggest you start there.
3907980
I wish some innovative design could give a second chance to this book. These pictures look so common, now. The layout of the book is also so common that you feel you are reading a year book from Time-Life 1960. Yes,  all this might have looked revolutionary in the 50's. To-day, you will buy  this book because it will remind you of some place or some time that is  important to you.
4617401
Three years before this, O'Reilly published "<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Designing-Interfaces-Patterns-for-Effective-Interaction-Design/dp/0596008031/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design</a>", a kind of innovative book, which used the classic approach of a pattern catalogue applied to GUI. Three years later, same publisher, different authors and again we've got an excellent book. This time the catalogues only covers web interfaces, a very welcomed choice since web based RIA are steadily becoming mainstream.
Depending on the technology you use, the suggestions you will find in this book may require trivial or very complex efforts in order to be implemented; but that's another story...
2170576
One of the best graphic design books of all time has been re-published! Almost 20 years ago Bob Gill (who was one of the founders of Pentagram) wrote a book called "Forget All the Rules of Graphic Design", and now Graphis has published an updated version. Why is this book so good? While most graphic designers since the 80's have focused on making things look pretty (or not so pretty) Gill was part of a generation who thought that the focus of graphic design should be to communicate - and be clever at it!
Unlike "Forget All the Rules of Graphic Design" this new edition is small and can be read on a subway. Gill has added a few new examples of his work, and he has revised some old designs (including the cover design of the old book). The cover of book reads "If this book helps only one designer get one original idea, then all of the months I spent putting it together will not have been worth it.", while Bob Gill may suffer a slight case of ego - he has helped many people find new ideas and inspiration.
1687057
This is really a good book on the design patterns which I reckon being better than the original one, in the sense it provides a higher clarity degree. Each pattern is explained in depth along with some good code and UML diagrams.
38914
A good index with design terms. So many pages with different poses. Makes the creative part of designing fashion more spontaneous without having to be intimidated by figure drawing.
1528810
Why high-tech products drive us crazy and how to restore the sanity

by Alan Cooper, SAMS, 1999

Cooper wanted to provide with this book a business case for improved UI design. He wanted to make a case that there was a strong need for improved interaction design. The case no doubt stands as strong today as 10 years ago. While one sees progress at leading companies in terms of usability, the sheer abundance and explosion of human/computer interaction has no doubt caused the friction and frustration with poorly designed interfaces to increase rather  than decrease.

Cooper has also written "how-to" books on interaction design:  "About Face" in which he describes the techniques to come to good "interaction" design. If you're looking for techniques, it is no doubt more worthwhile to investigate "About Face".

In the "Inmates", Cooper raises several very worthwhile insights and approaches. Professionals in the industry will definitely connect with the messages and follow Cooper's reasoning. Design will reduce the number of iterations needed to come to a good product, and will reduce your overall time and cost needed. We know this, but do not necessarily do this in all projects. Which is why Cooper advocates the strong integration of design in your culture and processes. And why he wrote the book in the first place.

Yet, at the same time, Cooper's tone and stance towards engineers and programmers could easily be seen as alienating and by some even as arrogant. Which, in the end, somewhat diminishes the goal of the book. The goal after all is to influence the professional software community, existing mostly out of engineers and programmers. In my summary, I left out most of these comments when Cooper gets somewhat carried away about how software engineers are wired differently ('homo logicus').

In the end, it is a light and easy-to-read, often amusing book which is making a good case for the strongly-needed discipline of design. If you're not familiar with the topic, it is no doubt worth your time.

[...]
1312256
This book is an excellent idea since there are a lot of web developes who may find it useful to learn at least the basics of web design and this book makes use of what they should already know as a web designer in introducing web design in a more efficient manner than a more general book would - by assuming that the reader already knows web development. All the essentials of web design are covered with appropriate references to how the aspects of design work in similar ways to how development works so that the person working through the book will have a far better idea of what the book is saying that anyone would have when first reading any more general book on web design - since the book draws on the readers on experiences from the past and relates the new knowledge to it directly.

The most major flaws in the book (and they are not too significant provided you are aware of them) are the couple of places where the autor provides outdated information. For example on page 127 where he suggests index.html#news will link to <a> on the index.html web page - which only works in some browsers - rather than suggesting that it will link to <div id="news"> which it will link to in all browsers apart from Netscape 4.

Information about IE8 was written before the browser was released and the information discussed on pages 226 and 227 was the way that it was originally proposed to work prior to the browser release on 19th March 2009 (8 months before the book's publication on 19th November). Since the browser actually now works the opposite way to what the book suggests and DOES support the standards unless you put it into compatibility mode those two pages really ought to have been rewritten before the book was published. Surely the nine months that elapsed between IE being changed and the book being released was sufficient notice to make that correction. There is a reference to IE8 nearing completion at the time of writing on the first page of Chapter 15 which is probably about right for when the book was actually being written but surely that browser release was signifiicant enough that the appropriate sections of the book should have been updated to reflect the way that the released version of IE8 works rather than the beta that the author had access to at the time. That there is so much wrong information in the book about one of the most popular browsers currently in use certainly reduces its usefulness.
4178169
A great book and all the instructions were very clear. I had no problem following them and I will tgry some more of the designs.
4829113
A great reference book from a well-respected designer and professor. There is a newer edition of this book, but this remains relevant.
4027219
Not so modern anymore, some good suggestions.