User Interface Design for Programmers

A previous reviewer wrote "I think this is a book that will only please the programmer who ... feels they do not have the time to devote to a better treatment of this subject." That describes me perfectly! I write mostly mathematical and control software. I don't get paid to design UIs. I do not claim to have studied graphic design, and I don't get paid to do so. Some of the components I write are for internal use and their only interface is their public (software) interface. But I find it is becoming more common that I am asked to design something that needs a UI that users will see. So I needed a short, clear introduction to good UI design that was engaging so I wouldn't fall asleep while reading it. This book is perfect for that! I really like Joel Spolsky's writing style. It's a great start - maybe all I need - with a (selective) bibliography at the end listing resources the author recommends for learning more.

It was a pleasure to read this book. Joel has an amazing writing style that is friendly, upbeat, funny, and insightful. While he clearly isn't the world's definitive expert on UI design, his years of real world experience and wealth of examples make this book both valuable and enjoyable. This has to be one of my favorite technical books.Joel's irreverent, tell-it-like-it-is, approach is part of the charm of this book. For example, chapter 10 is titled, "People Can't Control the Mouse" and chapter 13 is titled, "Those Pesky Usability Tests". From my years of software development in the games industry, many of his points on UI design hit home in a big way. I was actually shocked at how applicable the entire book was to game development. As a professional programmer, I felt the book was talking my language and completely in agreement with my own experiences.The truth is that there are so many boring and questionable technical books out there, it's refreshing to read something that is so honest and dead-on right.

Joel is a good writer who happens to be a programmer. That alone is enough to reccommend this one-of-a-kind book. His website contains tons of insightful, opinionated essays, and most of the time he's right, whether his topic is design, business stragegy, HR, or coding techniques. He's an ex-Microsoft employee who's saavy enough to know what MS does right and what they don't. In this book, much of which is available at his site, he's taking an approach that I don't think anyone else has: why UI design matters to programmers. He's not talking to experienced visual desingers, or HCI people, or interaction desingers or what have you. He's talking to programmers, the folks who will actually write lines of code. This book, in a quick 150 pages, shows programmers why interaction designers will spend, say, two days worrying about a couple of words or the placement of two buttons. Like Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think", it's a somewhat lightweight treatment of the topic for an experienced UI desinger, but you'd be foolish to pass it up for that reason. This, along with Krug would be a great book for Project Managers or senior staff wondering what all the fuss about "usability" really means. Where Jakob Nielsen's preachy fussiness can bore you to tears, Joel and Krug will make you eager to put their ideas into practice.Any company that can get its programmers, managers, and designers on the same page about the still under-appreciated value of UI design (and the analysis that goes into it) will find they can make better products faster.

UI Design for Programmers is an excellent guide to creating intuitive, usable software interfaces for the real world. The light tone and frequent anecdotes make it a pleasure to read, I finished the book the day after it arrived. Very refreshing compared to the dry, technical style of most other computer books. I would highly recommend it to anyone who designs interfaces for any type of software or web-based application.