For a basic overview of Interaction Design, I liked how this book was presented. It was clear and easy to read. Compared to some of the other books chosen for my course this one was usually a preferred resource for me.

Explore the new design discipline that is behind such products as the iPod and innovative Web sites like Flickr. While other books on this subject are either aimed at more seasoned practitioners or else are too focused on a particular medium like software, this guide will take a more holistic approach to the discipline, looking at interaction design for t

Used as a textbook in design courses during my undergrad. Easy to read, not too long, and inexpensive. The material is now dated, though. Some of the design guidelines have been upended by new research or no long apply because technology has moved on.

A brilliant overview which, while not touching on any one point in great depth, is surprisingly comprehensive. By necessity this can result in some vague sections and rules of thumb which are not always as set in stone as is presented and there are a few areas (such as the future forecasting and overall rather rigid view of the design process) where the book falls short. Nevertheless, it is an excellent guide to what can otherwise be an overwhelming topic. Perfect for an introduction, refresher, or finding areas to research further.

Was interested in Tesler’s law. Good interview here but book is more of a survey of topics and has not much depth.

Cool introductory book despite its publication date (2007).

As a general book on how to go about designing something, this is a decent introduction, but I never felt that it was really about "designing for interaction". Sure there's some talk about widgets and typical screen layouts, and how to create task flows, but very little about what makes good interactions - so to use an analogy, it sets you loose with a box of tools and then says "build something great". Well, yes but, ... what the book really needed was examples of good and bad interaction design, and analysis of why they were good or bad, and it just doesn't have that - at the end of the day it just too superficial to actually provide the detailed insight that would be really useful.

This (first) edition is also mortally hampered by dating from the pre-historic era of 2007, otherwise known as "the time before ubiquitous smartphones". For a book about smart applications and interaction to not be able to cover the pre-eminent interaction device of hundreds of millions of people is a huge weakness and especially jarring when he pins his prognostication on never-made-it terms like spimes and ubicomp and gone-nowhere-so-far technology like wearable computers and household robots but completely missed mobile smartphones.

So, decent introduction to design, but not what you need to read if you are intending to create "smart applications and clever devices".

Finally, there was one other thing that really annoyed me reading this book - and that's the way the author used IT terms in sort-of IT ways and sort-of not-IT ways and sort-of vaguely right but generally jarringly wrong - multitasking, middleware and stateless, to name three.

Lent to me by Jill. Great overview book, even if it's from 2007. Ch 5 is good.

Dan Saffer's book is full of design laws and rules of thumb, including the disproven "magic number seven" rule for number of items on a given page that users should be allowed to choose from. This refers to a study done in the 1950s that revealed that most people can hold no more than 7 random bits of information in their head at any given time. However, more recent studies have shown that if the information bits are somehow related to each other, the human mind has a much greater capacity for remembering them. Also, it isn't as if the user has to remember the choices when they are right there in front of them on the screen...

On the upside, however, there were a few useful tips, such as asking user interviewees to draw their experience rather than talk about them. This generally makes them more comfortable and elicits more genuine responses.

Unfortunately, Saffer caves to the temptation of ending the book with his version of cheesy futuristic predictions. He speculates such things as robotic kitchen cleaners and features novel inventions such as "The Hug Shirt", which electronically simulates hugs for the wearer.

This book is perhaps useful if you have no sense of design whatsoever, but otherwise it is overly simplistic and inflexible.

Liked it, but not in a couldn’t put it down sort of way.

Covers a lot of essential interaction design works, computer and other real world designs. Sometimes gets a bit too simple..

Solid introduction to interaction design, written with care, wisdom and rigour. It read a little bit too much like a textbook sometimes, but, well, to be fair, perhaps an interesting, thoughtful, well-written textbook. I found his insights on process and project manager especially interesting.