Designing Highly Useable Software

Rating:
Summary: Finally a usability book for programmers
Review: I finally finished reading this book, and I have to say, in time it will give the other usability books a run for their money. This book is written for programmers, and the goal of the book is to help us programmers step into the shoes of the users. The other reviewer couldn't relate to the stories, but I sure could. The author fills the book with funny stories about strange things he's encountered over the years that have frustrated him. These stories show what it's like to be a user. When you take this knowledge and apply it to programming, you start to understand how to build software for the user. Also, unlike other usability books, this one actually gets into some programming, with real-live code samples in C++! This guy really *is* a programmer. He even talks about design patterns, and methodologies like the Rational Unified Process. Get this book, read it, and start making great software.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: If you've read Alan Cooper's excellent "The Inmates are Running the
Asylum", you're familiar with the format of "Designing Highly Useable
Software": the main text talks about broad useability issues, while
entertaining (or frightening) sidebars pillory the flaws in the design
of everyday things. But whereas I sympathized with Cooper, I had
trouble identifying with Jeff Cogswell. The sidebars, meant to be
amusing, are mostly distracting: they are rarely relevant to the main
topic being discussed on the same page. Worse, Cogswell goes much too
far in complaining about the difficulty of living in the world around
him; the reasonable reader won't recognize himself in these vignettes.
Worse still, whenever this book steps away from abstract useability
discussions and into coding specifics, technical errors appear that
shake the reader's confidence.

I had high hopes for this book. Perversely, I expect slimmer books to
be better than fatter ones. At a relatively slim 300+ pages, I looked
forward to a good read packed with useful advice. Instead, the book
dragged on. The last five or six chapters (on such topics as dynamic
libraries, OOP, management, and training -- all with a heavy emphasis
on an outdated, waterfall-like development methodology) feel precisely
like padding. The first half-dozen alone, with more specific
useability advice and fewer suggested implementation details, might
have formed the basis of a far better book. But as it stands, I can't
recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Finally a usability book for programmers
Review: If you've read Alan Cooper's excellent "The Inmates are Running the
Asylum", you're familiar with the format of "Designing Highly Useable
Software": the main text talks about broad useability issues, while
entertaining (or frightening) sidebars pillory the flaws in the design
of everyday things. But whereas I sympathized with Cooper, I had
trouble identifying with Jeff Cogswell. The sidebars, meant to be
amusing, are mostly distracting: they are rarely relevant to the main
topic being discussed on the same page. Worse, Cogswell goes much too
far in complaining about the difficulty of living in the world around
him; the reasonable reader won't recognize himself in these vignettes.
Worse still, whenever this book steps away from abstract useability
discussions and into coding specifics, technical errors appear that
shake the reader's confidence.

I had high hopes for this book. Perversely, I expect slimmer books to
be better than fatter ones. At a relatively slim 300+ pages, I looked
forward to a good read packed with useful advice. Instead, the book
dragged on. The last five or six chapters (on such topics as dynamic
libraries, OOP, management, and training -- all with a heavy emphasis
on an outdated, waterfall-like development methodology) feel precisely
like padding. The first half-dozen alone, with more specific
useability advice and fewer suggested implementation details, might
have formed the basis of a far better book. But as it stands, I can't
recommend this book.