Designing the Obvious belongs in the toolbox of every person charged with the design and development of Web-based software, from the CEO to the programming team. Designing the Obvious explores the character traits of great Web applications and uses them as guiding principles of application design so the end result of every project instills customer satisfaction and loyalty. These principles include building only whats necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity. Designing the Obvious does not offer a one-size-fits-all development process--in fact, it lets you use whatever process you like. Instead, it offers practical advice about how to achieve the qualities of great Web-based applications and consistently and successfully reproduce them.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
I want my whole team to read this!!:
I love this book for it's brevity, clarity and simplicity. While everything in this book is obvious and common sense, it is still amazingly useful. You should not underestimate your minds ability to ignore and distort such obvious things, especially when we are emotionally invested in the product. Reading this book is helpful when starting or reviewing a product.
old but still good. buy it used it s not woth to buy it new.:
old but still good. buy it used it s not woth to buy it new.
Good value: sensible, clear, readable:
This book is to web application design what Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition is to website design. Many of the same concepts are echoed, the style is fairly engaging (if you can bear the occasional coy "dear reader" kind of aside), and the publishing format is similar. I agreed with much of what this book said. For example, the author advocates:
* Accommodating the users' mental models instead of forcing them to learn new concepts/skills
more info
A fine little book:
Not essential reading, but a really good little book. If you diligently follow companies like 37 Signals or other smart web application development practices, you've probably already thought of most of this. But it's nice to have it in a single, well-written, volume. One problem is that the author talks about "common sense" and "obviousness" as if they were universal, when they're not. It would have been nice to have some evidence from, say, the science of human visual perception to support some of the... more info
