Reviewed by David Dick
Once upon a time, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were found only in operating systems for PCs. Today, we confront GUIs when using self-service checkout counters, when paying bills online, and when using mobile phones, to name a few examples.
Whether we can complete our transactions or accomplish our tasks depends on GUIs that are easy to use and understand. No doubt you have seen people confused with the touch-screen menu at the self-service checkout, or abandon an online shopping cart because the form is confusing. You may well have chosen a competitor’s brand of income tax preparation software that is easier to use. Frustrated users mean lost profit and products that fail in the marketplace. When GUIs fail, companies call a UI designer such as Jeff Johnson to change poor design to great design.
The first edition of GUI Bloopers heralded Johnson’s first work as a book author. GUI Bloopers was intended for software developers who often double as UI designers, development managers, and new UI designers. But GUI Bloopers also gained popularity among teachers and technical writers who wanted to understand the rules of good user interface design. Readers’ feedback, new software products and Web applications on the market inspired Johnson to write an updated version—GUI Bloopers 2.0.
GUI Bloopers 2.0 describes common user-interface mistakes found in today’s software products and services, and provides design rules and guidelines to avoid them. Johnson describes the design decisions that lead to misuse of controls, poor navigation, prose-riddled labels, bad design and layout, faulty interaction, and poor responsiveness. GUI Bloopers 2.0 is well illustrated with hundreds of examples from real products and online services, and stories from his own experience.
To compare and contrast good and bad design, Johnson gives a “thumbs up” for good design and a “thumbs down” for a blooper. GUI Bloopers 2.0 earns my “two thumbs up.” The book is well written, well researched, and is an essential resource for anyone developing software products and web applications.
424 pages ISBN: 978-0123706430 September 2007
Chapter-by-Chapter
Johnson provides examples of real world UI development, his insights on common bloopers, and principles for how to avoid them.
Chapter 1, First Principles, describes nine principles of product design: focus on the users and their tasks, not on the technology; consider function first and presentation later; conform to the users’ view of the task; design for the common case; don’t complicate the users’ task; facilitate learning; deliver information and not just data; design for responsiveness; and try it out on users and then fix it. Too often, the rush to deliver products means ignoring one or more of these principles. Johnson could have omitted this chapter and jumped right into describing GUI bloopers, but it provides an informational foundation for the discussion of bloopers.
Chapter 2, GUI Control Bloopers, is the first of six chapters dedicated to GUI design details. It describes the most common misuses of controls (that is, checkboxes, tabs, input fields and buttons) and how to avoid them.
Chapter 3, Navigation Bloopers, emphasizes the importance of cues to let people know where they are, where they have been, and where they can go. This chapter describes the most common navigation mistakes and how to design effective navigation cues.
Chapter 4, Textual Bloopers, describes how users can be confused by inconsistent and unclear terminology, poor writing, jargon, and misleading text. The typical GUI contains a lot of text, and if it’s poorly written, users can easily get lost. Peer reviews of the user interface by developers do not uncover these errors if they cannot recognize them as confusing. For example, an error message that describes a script error is informative to a developer but meaningless to users. Johnson offers suggestions for educating development teams about good writing and acceptable terminology, and how to conduct reviews to identify textual bloopers. Once the GUI controls have been added, properly labeled and any supplemental text has been written, it is time to decide on presentation: layout, colors, and text fonts.
Chapter 5, Graphic Design and Layout Bloopers, presents guidelines on layout and window placement, colors, and text fonts. You will learn valuable presentation guidelines that will make user interface easier to read and understand. Unfortunately, Johnson was unable to provide examples of bloopers showing poor use of color because the book is printed in black and white. However, he covers color bloopers in a Web Appendix at http://www.gui-bloopers.com
Chapter 6, Interaction Bloopers, is the first of two chapters that describe the mechanics that underlie the user interface. In this chapter, Johnson presents the user interface design principles that affect human perception, reading, information processing, and problem solving. The chapter clarifies why violating these principles results in software products that are hard to learn and frustrating to use. Some of the design mistakes covered in this chapter are driven by business rules and processes mandated by clients and corporate policy. If those business rules and processes do not contribute to usability, this chapter will educate you on how to make an argument for improving interaction.
Chapter 7, Responsiveness Bloopers, describes the reasons for poor responsiveness and the design principles for improving responsiveness. Before I read this chapter, I assumed that sticky buttons, frozen cursors, and lagging scrollbars (to name a few) meant that my PC was too slow. After reading this chapter, I learned not to confuse responsiveness with performance.
Chapter 8, Management Bloopers, describes management misconceptions and mistakes that lead to poor product usability. Other authors have dedicated whole books to management-level problems that affect usability. Johnson could have easily omitted this chapter and listed those books as references. However, he does not just rant about why poor management leads to poor usability; he provides strategies and suggestions to educate management about usability.
Website
GUI Bloopers 2.0 also has a supplemental site, http://www.gui-bloopers.com with a bloopers checklist to check before product releases and bloopers about poor color use (the book is not printed in color).
About the Reviewer
David is an Associate Fellow, member of the Washington, D.C. chapter, and Editor of Usability Interface (newsletter for the Usability and User Experience Community).
