Product Description

First published seven years ago-just before the World Wide Web exploded into dominance in the software world-About Face rapidly became a bestseller. While the ideas and principles in the original book remain as relevant as ever, the examples in About Face 2.0 are updated to reflect the evolution of the Web.

Interaction Design professionals are constantly seeking to ensure that software and software-enabled products are developed with the end-user's goals in mind, that is, to make them more powerful and enjoyable for people who use them. About Face 2.0 ensures that these objectives are met with the utmost ease and efficiency.

Alan Cooper (Palo Alto, CA) has spent a decade making high-tech products easier to use and less expensive to build-a practice known as "Interaction Design." Cooper is now the leader in this growing field. Mr. Cooper is also the author of two bestselling books that are widely considered indispensable texts. About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design, intro-duced the first comprehensive set of practical design principles. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum explains how talented people and companies continually create aggravating high-tech products that fail to meet customer expectations.

Robert Reimann has spent the past 15 years pushing the boundaries of digital products as a designer, writer, lecturer, and consultant. He has led dozens of interaction design projects in domains including e-commerce, portals, desktop productivity, authoring environments, medical and scientific instrumentation, wireless, and handheld devices for startups and Fortune 500 clients alike. Joining Cooper in 1996, Reimann led the development and refinement of many goal-directed design methods described in About Face 2.0. He has lectured on these methods at major universities and to international industry audiences. He is a member of the advisory board of the UC Berkeley Institute of Design.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #399637 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 504 pages

Review
&provides detailed and easily readable information on interaction design& -- M2 Best Books, 23 July 2003

"...provides detailed and easily readable information on interaction design..." -- M2 Best Books, 23 July 2003

"developers have a lot to learn from this book..." -- Managing Information, April 2004

“…very informative and challenging…ought to be read by any one who makes any claim to design user interfaces. Highly recommended..” (ACCU, 13^th February, 2005)

"...provides detailed and easily readable information on interaction design..." (M2 Best Books, 23 July 2003)

"developers have a lot to learn from this book..." (Managing Information, April 2004)

From the Back Cover
Dear Reader,

In the eight years since this book was first published, the ideas that seemed do radical at first have become standard models across the industry. Many practicioners have adopted them and seen dramatic improvements in their products.

This book would not have been possible without the commitment of the many organizations over the past decade that hired Cooper, my design consulting company. They demonstrated a great measure of self-confidence to break from the pack.

By the same token, the many brilliant and talented people who have worked at Cooper have pushed the limits of my original thinking far beyond where I started. They have put their professional reputations on the line to prove that there is a higher standard and better ways to achieve it.

In this significantly revised and expanded edition of the book, Robert Reimann and I have rewritten and reorganized every page. Together we have:

• Updated examples to reflect the current state of the art, and included more examples from Cooper design solutions
• Included references to recent technology and industry developments
• Added an entirely new section covering Cooper's Goal-Directed Design methods such as personas, goals, and scenarios in detail
• Added new chapters on visual design, as well as interaction design issues for embedded systems and the Web
• Added a bibliography of design reference sources

Thanks for joining me in the pursuit of better software, happier programmers and designers, more successful businesses, and extremely satisfied users.

Sincerely,
Alan Cooper
Founder & Chairman of the Board
Cooper

"About Face 2.0 is one of the very rare design books that's fun to read, even though it rocks fundamental beliefs and packs the page with useful information. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what the software design process should be (but usually isn't). The perspective is unique: intellectually rigorous enough for academics while remaining focused on helping practitioners. I'd recommend this book to anybody in the business."
– Harley Manning, Research Director, Forrester Research

About the Author
Alan Cooper is a pioneering software inventor, programmer, designer, and theorist. He is credited with creating what many regard as the first serious business software for microcomputers, and is widely known as the "Father of Visual Basic." For the last decade, Alan’s interaction design consulting firm, Cooper, has helped companies invent powerful, usable, desirable software and improve digital product behavior through the use of Alan’s unique methodology – the Goal-Directed process. A cornerstone of this method, the use of personas, has been widely adopted since it was first described in Alan’s second book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum. A best-selling author and popular speaker, Alan is a tireless advocate for integrating design into business practice and for humanizing technology.
Robert Reimann has spent the past 15 years pushing the boundaries of digital products as a designer, writer, lecturer, and consultant. He has led dozens of design consulting projects for startups and Fortune 500 clients alike. Upon joining Cooper in 1996, Robert led the development and refinement of many Goal-Directed Design methods described in About Face 2.0. He has lectured at major universities and to international industry audiences, and he is a member of the industry advisory board for the Institute of Design at the University of California, Berkeley.

Customer Reviews

Annoyingly excellent
This book is a self-indulgent rant, that is also poorly edited and structured. If the authors had read their own book and applied their principles to its pages, reading it would have been as much of a pleasure as using software that follows their advice.

Why do I give it 5 stars?
Because beneath the diatribes and soapbox oration there is a depth of experience and of thought I have not found elsewhere.

The authors have considered the issue of what makes using software a pleasurable experience for the user in a depth and with a degree of insight that opened my eyes.

The best and most up to date resource for Interaction Design
Two thirds of this book are roughly the same as the previous version, but if you want to find some new gems of information you should read it all. Reading it all was no exercise for me. It reminded me of some issues I had forgetten and am not using and I was pleased to be reminded.

The first part on the Cooper Process is excellent and gives lots of insights and new information. The new chapter on Visual Design is a bit simplistic in my view, but if you know the matter you shouldn't be bothered by that.

All examples are updated and fresh. Some new pictures of Cooper project help in making the case. I particularly liked the interactive pie charts for example.

As the Web is moving towards Rich Internet application and the desktop applicatios are moving towards Rich Internet information applications this is the best and most up to date resource for Interaction Design we have at this moment.

I read it in a weekend. I bet you will too...

Good on concepts, weaker on examples
This follow up to About Face is a good overview of the critical concepts to improve software usability. Cooper and Reiman know their stuff. Reading this certainly provides you with the grounding you need to make good decisions. At a tactical level, the book could certainly do more to help with real-world examples.
For that, you may want to take a look instead at Jenifer Tidwell's Designing Interfaces : Patterns for Effective Interaction Design. Where About Face is strong on theory, Designing Interfaces is all about practical ideas, demonstrated through graphical examples.
If UI is an important part of your world, buy them both.