Reviews: Book Reviews

One thing we can count on is that the quantity of information is increasing over time. The prevalence of information, its relationship to knowledge, and its impact on people’s decision-making faculties is becoming a more central concern for UX professionals.

Richard Saul Wurman, the author of Information Anxiety, is a trained architect, a very prolific writer, the founder of the TED conference, and a well-known public speaker. Although he wrote this book 30 years ago, the ideas it presents are just as relevant today as they were then, perhaps more so. It’s a credit to the solidity of his thinking that many of his concepts seem to predict the world in which we live today. Read More

Author: Jenifer Tidwell

Publisher: O’Reilly Media

Publication date: November 2005

Format: Paperback; 9.7 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches; 331 pages

ISBN: 0596008031

List price: $49.95

Overview

I must admit that I am not a fan of pattern books in general—especially in the field of design. I’ve always felt they are excellent sources of inspiration if you’re crafting a quilt or stenciling a wainscot for your living room, but for more involved design activities, I’ve concluded they are too simplistic—perhaps even limiting. I suspect this opinion was informed by my architecture professor’s intensely negative reaction to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building when they were first published. Years later, when I learned that software engineers were enamored of Alexander’s books, and the emergence of software patterns had its basis in Alexander’s notion of design patterns, I was bemused and skeptical. Read More

It’s December, and we’re coming up to the gift-giving season. In case you want to put something professionally relevant on your wish list—or, perhaps more realistically, in case you haven’t yet spent your 2010 book-buying budget—I’m going to devote this column to books. Specifically, books on form design.

I admit that I am coauthor of one of them, but I’m going to try to be as objective as possible. If you’re a forms geek, you’ll want all of them. Not a forms geek? Read on, and I’ll try to help you pick out the ones that are most relevant to you. Read More