Human-Computer Interaction (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Even my tutor did not like this book.
Review: I am currently studying CS at university and one of my classes in HCI. All I can say about this book is that even the tutor for the class hated this book - as did all the students - so much so that the next semesters' book is going to be something else.

Rating:
Summary: Steer clear of this one
Review: I had the misfortune of having to buy this book for a night course I took for personal interest. As a an engineering professional, I found the ideas of having a customer throughout architecture, design, test completely impractical. Other impracticalities include assessing usuability by hiring an expert in cognitive behavior.

I had hoped the book contained information that would help with the practical design of gadgets and/or GUI interfaces. No examples of good and bad, what the public in general wants, how this is affected by demographics, etc.

This book contains hardly and only a small amount of technical, non-subjective material.

The book is also not gender neutral and uses "she" often when they refer to a non-specific user/person, which got on my nerves!

Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to HCI
Review: I used this book for one of my courses in professional computing.
I find this book to be quite readable, the essential and pertinent concepts are well-explained, and the scope of coverage is comprehensive. All the necessary aspects of HCI, the models of the user, interaction, system, are touched on. The chapter regarding the usability paradigms and principles is elucidated in a structured and systematic way, and the chapter on the dialog notations and design introduces some commonly used notations, including Petri Nets, which are also in common use in other IT topics.
This book does not delve into the more esoteric applications and theories behind HCI, but I would not necessary classify that as a shortcoming, for the book was probably never meant to be targetted at advanced researchers anyway.
All in all, I would highly recommend this book to those who want to get into the fundamentals of HCI, be able to use the concepts for practical applications in daily life, and who need a handy reference.

Rating:
Summary: Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!
Review: I'm a computer science student and last semester I had a GUI course where this HCI book was in the curriculum. It has to -without a doubt- be the worst book I have ever read. There is absolutely nothing useful in it, whatsoever. Nothing in that book will help people design better user interfaces for their programs/web pages. You'll be much better off simply with the use of common sense!

Rating:
Summary: Worst HCI textbook ever
Review: The audience of this book are supposedly to be undergraduate students taking user interface design or usability analysis classes. However, this book lacks the insights and conceptual depth commonly required by a college level textbook. This book simply uses too much pages to describe common senses without covering the real non-trival HCI knowlege people accumulated in the past thirty years. I feel this book might be ideal for high-school students as HCI readings, it's definately not for undergradates, researchers or professionals who want to impove their own skills in user-centered design.