Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions

Great book showing a lot of user interface patterns of successful web applications. The hard part is actually reading it since it feels to technical, in my opinion they should have added more stories, not only examples. By that I mean they should tell a story such as “Yahoo used to have this interface and after doing more research they changed to this and this increased their conversions in X%” (It’s just an example, I’m just talking about being more descriptive).

The feeling that I had by the end of the book was the feeling I used to have when reading math books in college: “I don’t know what I just read but looks like I’m gonna need it”. Now I have it on my desk so I can consult it when creating new user interfaces, it’s good for that but I think it could be even better if reading it was easier.

The 6 principles discussed in the book are really important, and I would say it’s a must read for those starting with the web. What I liked about the book is that it’s a time saver for those designing web applications, you can save time by simply consulting the book to get some ideas for new interfaces. Specially in projects with low budget (and if the budget is low, usually the UX professional is the last one on board) where you need to develop fast with no money for usability testing (nope, I don’t fully support this idea), at least you know that pattern is being used in another successful web application. Of course after the first development is done is really recommended to run usability testing, to make sure the pattern you chose adapts to your users needs.

My recommendation is: buy the book, take a quick look at it, put it on your desk and open it every time you need to design a new user interface (no, I wouldn’t read the whole thing before that).