About Face
The essential interaction design guide, fully revised and updated for the mobile age About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, Fourth Edition is the latest update to the book that shaped and evolved the landscape of interaction design. This comprehensive guide takes the worldwide shift to smartphones and tablets into account. New information includes discussions on mobile apps, touch interfaces, screen size considerations, and more. The new full-color interior and unique layout better illustrate modern design concepts. The interaction design profession is blooming with the success of design-intensive companies, priming customers to expect "design" as a critical ingredient of marketplace success. Consumers have little tolerance for websites, apps, and devices that don't live up to their expectations, and the responding shift in business philosophy has become widespread. About Face is the book that brought interaction design out of the research labs and into the everyday lexicon, and the updated Fourth Edition continues to lead the way with ideas and methods relevant to today's design practitioners and developers.
Stats for nerds
23recommend
39mentions
33people
2009–2026years
69% recommend31% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- One of the most influential books I ever read was About Face by Alan Cooper. What he said about this bad modal dialogue is that you should simply not ask the user, and let them undo later.
This was heresy at the time, but turned out to be the native user flow for iOS later on. And now it's common in web apps.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118766571?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p...
- About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, Christopher Noessel, with Jason Csizmadi and Doug LeMoine extensively covers how to talk with users.
- I recommend focusing first on UX as it applies to areas that are closest to your expertise. Not a good idea to go head first into art history, color theory, typography or concepts that are so far removed from what you're doing that would feel alien.
Try starting a conversation with a FE engineer friend or even better with a UX engineer / design technologist if you know one. They speak both languages :)
If you prefer reading, NNgroup is great for basics. Start with their 10 usability heuristics: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
These 3 books should give you some great starting points:
About Face - The Essentials of Interaction Design: https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/About+Face%3A+The+Essentials+of+...
Design of Everyday Things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
Creative Selection: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37638098-creative-select...
- Since ~2013 Apple designers have been throwing over board lots of conventions the company had been itself establishing for decades.
I remember user interface design class at my university ca. 2005 where 20 out of the 30 best practice interaction design patterns originated at Apple!
Steve Jobs for the most part really cared and you could feel those priorities clearly: "it's how it works, not how it looks!"
Aside from some natural missteps, the "form over function" critique at the time was predominantly false. Apple is slowly getting there though, joining "ignorant web" as correctly called out here by Nikita.
The thing is that none of this is a joke or could be taken however lightly. It's 2024 and by now we've fundamentally realized the "Software is Eating the World" prophecy; living in a digitally permeated world.
Bad design is a moral issue, in worst case scenarios it has been killing people before and will increasingly kill or harm even more going forward. It always starts with the little things, especially so in design / engineering.
I desperately hope that Zoomers at least will start to realize that Millenials really fucked it up in that regard. I know, I know it also were the bosses pushing for this but we clearly should have said "no" much more often as the professionals (?) implementing this stuff.
There is much satisfaction waiting in learning; a full-grown craft with deep history.
Zoomers: Alan Cooper's "About Face" is a great start, probably super cheap these days as seemingly no one cares anymore.
- > Alan Cooper's "About Face" is a great start
I'm not sure if I read all the way through it when I first got my copy but it -is- very good and I have it stashed for the next time I end up doing UI design.
Well worth a look.
- Great list! You are missing the big one (imho) : About Face, Interaction Design by Alan Cooper
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