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Summary: The book has its own major 'GUI' blooper
Review: I pass the book around to people who are not in the UI field and point to one of the graphic examples in the book with the thumbs-down indicator. I ask them to identify what the author thinks is wrong with the item shown...and they can't answer.Why? Because the images lack short descriptions that explain their shortcomings to the casual reader. The author has failed to aknowledge the browsing reader (as opposed to the narrative one) and forces them to cross-reference the image id numbers against the narrative. Everything has a UI, even books, failing to address that in this one made for a poor first impression that makes it quite irritating in the long run. </rant> Overall somewhat long winded on some sections but useful for the novice.
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Summary: How it helped me
Review: I read this book knowing really nothing about gui design. It is a very methodical book and was extremely helpful to me. I even took the time to make a checklist of things to look out for and then applied the concepts to my designs. The result is that on every software demo we give of our product developed using the checklist, we get the same comments: "Wow! This is really easy to use/learn!" nuf said.
Rating:
Summary: How it helped me
Review: I read this book knowing really nothing about gui design. It is a very methodical book and was extremely helpful to me. I even took the time to make a checklist of things to look out for and then applied the concepts to my designs. The result is that on every software demo we give of our product developed using the checklist, we get the same comments: "Wow! This is really easy to use/learn!" nuf said.
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Summary: Good UI stuff in a Bad book
Review: I think it is pretty clear from the other reviews that the content of this book is very nice. The author is definitely very experienced and his points all make sense. But I _won't_ recommend you buy it (not for now). Go find the book and see it in person first. I am very disappointed by the poor design of the book. In particular, I completely agree with another reviewer that this book _itself_ is a GUI Blooper: there is practically no caption to all illustrations except "Figure X.Y" with a thumb-up or thumb-down icon to indicate whether the example UI is good or bad. True, the illustrations are all referenced in the rather _dense_ text; but if you look at the illustrations, it is not very instructive as they require you to read the text carefully to know why something is good or bad. (Did I say the text dense?) The author should have added a couple sentences to the captions to summerize his idea. As for UI design books for programmers, I recommend reading User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky first. Then read this one when you have extra time.
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Summary: I Wish I Had it 6 Months Ago
Review: I wish I had this book 6 months ago before my company blew money on cruddy software. The front end was absolutely horrible, but being an amateur I couldn't place my finger on what it was. My company bought the software and I bought this book. Just simply looking through the book, I now realize just what the problem with the front end was. Every single "don't" the book tells you to avoid, the software does! It blew my mind just how bad the software was. Too bad Jeff Johnson didn't do the work on the software :^( Why four stars? Some of the concepts, in my opinion, were a little difficult to work with. He gives wonderful "don'ts" for examples, but some of those "don'ts" don't seem to always have a solution for a work around. (Especially when dealing with large amounts of information.) Despite the four stars, any person who writes any code should at least look through this book, or steal a friend's.
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Summary: Excelent book for UI developers and designers
Review: I would recommend to read this book to all UI developers, especially to those who never did UI programming before (I mean who been assigned to do UI programming without previous UI developmnet experience). Also, I would recomment to read it managers, who think that any prograammer could do UI "easily"!? It's really helpfull book also for people using VB, Delphi, PowerBuilder, etc. integrated IDEs to build GUI - you'll recognize a lot of weaknesses in your lovely IDEs! Anyway, it woth to read. And then decide if I'm wrong or not....
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Summary: Experienced developer opinion
Review: I've been a developer over the paste 13 years so I am, as one said, the main target for cryptichism (from the author's point of view) in this book. But I've got to admit it, he is almost always, right. Never, in my life, i've found such an amount of good advices compiled together. If you want to improve usability this is a good choice. Congratulations Mr.Jeff Jonhson! You are one of kind.
Rating: 
Summary: A Very Good Book, Slightly Flawed
Review: If everybody who creates Web sites took Jeff Johnson's advice in this book, the Web would, for sure, be a better place. My only problem with it is that the advice could be better. I was at the session at the Computer Human Interaction conference in Holland where Jeff Johnson spoke. But another Jeff, Jeff Raskin also spoke and showed how some of Johnson's examples could be improved. Raskin also introduced a book, The Humane Interface, somewhat deeper than this one, that helps you to really understand Web design. I'd reccomend reading and understanding Raskin's book so that you can see the few places where Johnson's ideas don't quite work. Then you can use this book, which is 95% right.
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Summary: Excellent practical advice for real-world developers
Review: If you develop software for a living, then you should read this book. The author is clearly very experienced with user interfaces, and does a great job of transferring his hard-won knowledge to the reader. This isn't some highbrow pseudo-psychology academic textbook on HCI. Rather, it's contains loads of down to earth, practical advice for developers on how to create better user interfaces. Well worth reading.
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Summary: Most practical UI book I have read - excellent organisation
Review: If your introduction to HCI was through one of the usual books by Hix, Dix, Schneiderman, Preece etc this book will come as a breath of fresh air. Unlike other books on the subject, this one is not academic and in fact it has one of the most practical approaches I have come across. Not groundbreaking like "About Face", but certainly more useful to everyday developers. After going through the theory in the first chapter, the author lists 82 GUI bloopers organised in logical sections, grouped under 7 chapters - thus making the book easily searchable. At first you might think that the book provides a few laughs at the expense of GUI screen shots from software applications publicly available. It certainly does that and it is very entertaining from that point of view, but that is just a side effect of the real value it offers. Every blooper is described in terms of why it is wrong, accompanied with screen shot examples and reasons why a developer might have committed the mistake. It finishes off by describing the remedy to the blooper and providing GUI solutions for the screenshots that were 'named and shamed' earlier. The approach is very instructive but not overbearing. Categories include GUI components, layout & appearance, textual, interaction and responsiveness bloopers. Believe me: these are not extreme GUI errors that we never commit; read this book and prepare to be enlightened. It has earned a place on my reference shelf and I am already referring back to it every now and then. We are also using it as a checklist for UI products in Alpha/Beta development and for assisting in the production of a new in-house style guide.
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