About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design

Want to know how to make great software products and systems? Buy this book, read it, and share with your team. There's really nothing like it.This is the fourth version of a 1995 book by Alan Cooper that helped launch the interaction design discipline. Written for practitioners and cited by researchers, each edition of About Face has advanced the field. And this thoroughly updated edition will do the same.Sure, you can read blogs on the web that have interesting tidbits to say about designing for social, the niceties of interactive data displays, or gesture design for mobile. And you can certainly buy books that offer design lessons and principles. But no other resource has tackled the subject at the methodical depth and breadth that Cooper's team of writers do here.The material is useful for newbie designers (worth the price just for the consistent and battle-tested vocabulary). What's more, the book provides philosophies, methods, and resources that experienced design managers can use to build happy design teams that programmers and executives love to work with.The writing is often playful, the design is elegant, and the ideas are incendiary. Enjoy!

The content is as good as the Bible. But the publishers should be ashamed of themselves for not reading it and practicing what Cooper says. If you can't make something delightful to use, at least don't make it infuriating. Ironically, the best book on interaction design has the worst possible kindle interface. Why did they not put in so simple a thing as a table of contents! It's not the kind of book one reads in a straight line, but you skip around and use it like a reference. Yet there is no table of contents--just three sections you can link to and a text list of the chapters within. No running heads so you know where you are. No page numbers. Ironic and infuriating and I'd return it if not for the comments that the paper version uses cheap paperback glue.

I don't want to ding this book on the content, the previous editions were great, but like another reviewer, the book literally cracked in half and pages started falling out the first time I (gently) opened it. Here is hoping that the publisher addresses the issue, or perhaps this is part of a bad run -- but it is pretty amazing that Wiley let these out the door.

The book is informative for product and interaction design. It provides good frameworks for user engagements and understanding the strategic position of experience designers in the development process. It goes into great detail about the user mental models and how that should inform the design of systems. Overall the content is spot on as a comprehensive look at the subject and is highly usable as a step by step guide for user engagement.

I love the material in the book but the pages are falling out. I'm holding the book together with binder clips. I've only read up through chapter 4 and there are 21 chapters. They don't make binder clips big enough! Am I going to need to glue it?5/5 for content0/5 for binding

Very useful book on the overview of the process overall and in great details. Would highly recommend

This book is fantastic for beginners, but is not very useful for anyone who already has even a modest background in UX. I was a M.A. in Human-Computer Interaction, so I already had a footing in research methods and UI design by the time I came around to this book. I bought this book about 8 months into my first job when we were about to start working on a desktop application, and the literature on desktop UI is already very lacking on the internet. In this respect, About Face is somewhat useful in providing some limited perspective on desktop UI conventions. It also does a decent job at describing the history and conventions of UI that existed in the past, but has nothing to say about where UI is going, and how to adjust to a changing UI landscape.This book has mostly been used by me to provide context when I'm setting off on defining a new feature or function for a piece of software, and it helps me perform 'sanity checks' when my non-UX colleagues try to assert that a certain UI element is used in a certain way and I need to demonstrate why they're wrong (e.g., "No, Brad, About Face particularly cautions against the use of cascading menus.").

This is a must have for all UX designers Product Managers, Project Managers, Managers, Digital Designers, Designers... The print edition looks overwhelming from the outset by it's physical appearance (Big) however once embarking on the reading adventure you will be pleasantly surprised at how digestible it is and for me entertaining. Lots of ah ha moments, highlighting and taking notes along the way. I have given my print copy of the last edition to a friend and I'm enjoying the new Kindle edition. Here is a blue print for a truly user centered approach. @creativUXdesign

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O livro se mostra essencial pra quem quer trabalhar na area. A quantidade de conhecimento estampada nessas paginas faz com que ele seja nao um extra, mas uma parte essencial da carreira de qualquer designer da area

A must read for interaction designer!

It is a big book, so I suggest you take your time and underline whatever you find useful. But it is a great book to get the feel into interaction design. Every chapter teaches you something valuable and applicable on any project you might have.

Great book, I bought this for my masters in Human-Centered Interactive Technologies and it was really useful for some of the modules i did. The book is great value for money and the illustrations are useful, especially for a visual learner.