Brief review of the book “User Interface Design for Programmers”
September 22nd, 2004
Joel Spolsky’s book User Interface Design for Programmers is fun to read. Kinda expensive though 😮 I don’t know why he opted to go full color because most stuff inside can be printed in nice and affordable B&W.
Summary of this book: (well, IMHO)
- Users don’t read manual, nor dialogs.
- Users can’t use mouse.
- Users ain’t stupid, it’s just not their fault. You have to make UI easy for them to use.
- Long and elegant writing is shit. KISS style writing rules.
- Imaginary user sucks. Take your mockup to the mess hall and grab 5 people to review it.