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Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Common Sense Advice
Review: A nice, nontechnical discussion of how to design an interactive system that typically is a website. Barfield goes easy on the jargon. Not your typical acronum-laden computer book. Some issues of usability will be familiar to those harking from the field of industrial design. There, of course, you design and build something tangible; that can be seen, touched, moved, driven or worn. Currently, if you design a web system, it can only be seen or heard. Leaving aside haptic (touch) applications, which are still rare and in their infancy.
But note this. Of all the ways that we get sensory input, vision has the highest bandwidth. Which is why the new media design in the book has so much relevance to industrial design. The book has tons of common sense advice. One item is instructive, because if you only know English, you may NEVER even be aware of it. An application should have a consistent tone of voice. In all other European languages, there is a format second person 'you' (eg. 'vous' in French), and an informal 'you' ('tu'). If your application addresses the user, it should use only 1 tone. The closest approximation in an English application might be between a formal, pedagogic style and a chatty use of vernacular. The only quibble I have is with his use of 'spiritual ergonomics', which he defines as 'the design of all aspects of a system with the spiritual parameters of the human mind'. Please! [Eyeball rolling.] The examples he cites are how you might feel when using an application, like enjoyment, humour, fear, prestige. I suggest that given the examples he cites, a better term might be 'emotional ergonomics'. It seems more accurate and does not convey some of the implications, possibly divisive, of 'spiritual'.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Common Sense Advice
Review: A nice, nontechnical discussion on how to design an interactive system that typically
is a website. Barfield goes easy on the
jargon. Not your typical acronum-laden
computer book. Some issues of usability
will be familiar to those harking from the
field of industrial design. There, of
course, you design and build something
tangible; that can be seen, touched, moved,
driven or worn. Currently, if you design a
web system, it can only be seen or heard.
Leaving aside haptic (touch) applications,
which are still rare and in their infancy. But note this. Of all the ways that we get
sensory input, vision has the highest
bandwidth. Which is why the new media
design in the book has so much relevance to
industrial design. The book has tons of common sense advice.
One item is instructive, because if you
only know English, you may NEVER even be
aware of it. An application should have a
consistent tone of voice. In all other
European languages, there is a format
second person 'you' (eg. 'vous' in French),
and an informal 'you' ('tu'). If your
application addresses the user, it should
use only 1 tone. The closest approximation
in an English application might be between
a formal, pedagogic style and a chatty use
of vernacular. The only quibble I have is with his use of
'spiritual ergonomics', which he defines as
'the design of all aspects of a system with
the spiritual parameters of the human
mind'. Please! [Eyeball rolling.] The
examples he cites are how you might feel
when using an application, like enjoyment,
humour, fear, prestige. I suggest that
given the examples he cites, a better term
might be 'emotional ergonomics'. It seems
more accurate and does not convey some of
the implications, possibly divisive, of
'spiritual'.
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