Dan Saffer

It's funny how a book about interaction design fails to provide a good interaction with its own content by constantly interrupting the reading experience with two pages long boxes in the middle of a sentence.
Besides that, it's a short introduction to the subject and it can be useful to understand some basic topics.

After defining the topic as “single use-case features [of a user interface] that do one thing only” with a light switch as the iconic example, arguing for the importance of getting the features of user experience right, setting the goal of “dissect[ing] microinteractions in order to help readers design their own”, and a mostly-irrelevant but well-told introductory story about a cell-phone ring-tone destroying a musical performance, the author quickly establishes an analysis show more framework, dividing interactions into Triggers, Rules, and Feedback, and devotes early chapters to explaining each of the components.

The book, unfortunately, doesn’t fulfill this promising (minus that story) start.

Rather than an intensive and systematic dissection of single-use-case interactions, we’re given example after example (after example) of Triggers, then of Rules, then of Feedback, almost all drawn from postings to a single Website (“Little Big Details”),accompanied by a narrative which, by rapidly changing point of view and underlying metaphor, makes the analytical context confusing and causes all of these examples (and there are a LOT of examples) to just pile together, conceptually.

There are good ideas — use smart defaults, don’t start from zero, recognize “signature moments” — but they are presented in mind-numbing breadth rather than depth, with many, many examples but little analysis of why these rules might apply exactly this way in this particular context. The barrage of examples, to me, grew tiresome. You might have figured that out already.

Mr. Saffer tells us how to judge a successful feature — “what you’re striving for is a feeling of naturalness, an inevitability, a flow…” — and it’s a shame he didn’t apply that simple measure to his book.

I appreciate and generally trust the “Who Should Read This Book?” feature in O’Reilly books, but in this case it failed me — rather than the “anyone who cares about making better products” of the Preface, the right audience is professional, full-time user experience designers wanting to, and able to, hone their skills through exposure to examples. If that sort of person could have a much higher opinion of the book, and I wouldn’t argue a bit. show less

I would've given it a higher rating if he hadn't pulled so liberally from the graduate curriculum of Carnegie Mellon's Master of Design program without citing his sources. A single mention of the school in the introduction, and a single mention of the architect/pioneer of the philosophy that the MDes programs espouse, is not at all adequate.

Otherwise, though, the stuff he wrote on his own is a pretty good primer of interaction and user experience design.

A useful first introduction to interaction design, covering a lot of ground in a very light and readable way. Saffer characterizes the field, discusses the digital design materials and tools, outlines the phases of the design process, and even touches on more advanced topics such as adaptivity, service design, ethics and future challenges -- all very brief and approachable. I imagine that the book might whet the appetite of many readers to know more about interaction design. Too bad that show more there are no references or suggestions for further study. show less