Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design

by Jenifer Tidwell, Charles Brewer, Aynne Valencia

Overview

Designing good application interfaces isn’t easy now that companies need to create compelling, seamless user experiences across an exploding number of channels, screens, and contexts. In this updated third edition, you’ll learn how to navigate through the maze of design options. By capturing UI best practices as design patterns, this best-selling book provides solutions to common design problems.

You’ll learn patterns for mobile apps, web applications, and desktop software. Each pattern contains full-color examples and practical design advice you can apply immediately. Experienced designers can use this guide as an idea sourcebook, and novices will find a road map to the world of interface and interaction design.

• Understand your users before you start designing
• Build your software’s structure so it makes sense to users
• Design components to help users complete tasks on any device
• Learn how to promote wayfinding in your software
• Place elements to guide users to information and functions
• Learn how visual design can make or break product usability
• Display complex data with artful visualizations

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781492051961
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/28/2020
Edition description:	3rd ed.
Pages:	599
Sales rank:	406,159
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Jenifer Tidwell has been designing and building user interfaces for industry for more than a decade. She has been researching user interface patterns since 1997, and designing and building complex applications and web interfaces since 1991.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Second Edition; Changes in the Second Edition; Preface; Small Interface Pieces, Loosely Joined; About Patterns in General; Other Pattern Collections; About the Patterns in This Book; Audience; How This Book Is Organized; Comments and Questions; Safari® Books Online; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1: What Users Do; 1.1 A Means to an End; 1.2 The Basics of User Research; 1.3 Users’ Motivation to Learn; 1.4 The Patterns; Chapter 2: Organizing the Content: Information Architecture and Application Structure; 2.1 The Big Picture; 2.2 The Patterns; Chapter 3: Getting Around: Navigation, Signposts, and Wayfinding; 3.1 Staying Found; 3.2 The Cost of Navigation; 3.3 Navigational Models; 3.4 Design Conventions for Websites; 3.5 The Patterns; Chapter 4: Organizing the Page: Layout of Page Elements; 4.1 The Basics of Page Layout; 4.2 The Patterns; Chapter 5: Lists of Things; 5.1 Use Cases for Lists; 5.2 Back to Information Architecture; 5.3 Some Solutions; 5.4 The Patterns; Chapter 6: Doing Things: Actions and Commands; 6.1 Pushing the Boundaries; 6.2 The Patterns; Chapter 7: Showing Complex Data: Trees, Charts, and Other Information Graphics; 7.1 The Basics of Information Graphics; 7.2 The Patterns; Chapter 8: Getting Input from Users: Forms and Controls; 8.1 The Basics of Form Design; 8.2 Control Choice; 8.3 The Patterns; Chapter 9: Using Social Media; 9.1 What This Chapter Does Not Cover; 9.2 The Basics of Social Media; 9.3 The Patterns; Chapter 10: Going Mobile; 10.1 The Challenges of Mobile Design; 10.2 The Patterns; Chapter 11: Making It Look Good: Visual Style and Aesthetics; 11.1 Same Content, Different Styles; 11.2 The Basics of Visual Design; 11.3 What This Means for Desktop Applications; 11.4 The Patterns; References; Websites; Books; Colophon;

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
User interface tools have become richer, but designing intuitive software is still tough. (If you’re designing for cellphones, GPS systems, DVRs, or other new contraptions, it’s even tougher.) Designing Interfaces organizes today’s best wisdom into patterns you can use, learn from, riff on. Use it to build interfaces that meet your unique challenges -- and leverage your creativity -- even as they remain friendly and familiar.

Jenifer Tidwell begins with the patterns of user behavior that should drive your work. (Users want instant gratification, settle for “good enough,” sometimes change their minds...) Then, thoughtfully and systematically, she addresses information architecture; application structure; navigation and wayfinding; displaying complex data; supporting user commands, actions, and input; and a whole lot more. There’s even a chapter on making applications look great -- without sacrificing one iota of usability. Bill Camarda, from the January 2006 Read Only

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