ŷ

Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction

Rate this book
A new edition of the #1 text in the Human Computer Interaction field!

Hugely popular with students and professionals alike, Interaction Design is an ideal resource for learning the interdisciplinary skills needed for interaction design, human-computer interaction, information design, web design and ubiquitous computing.

This text offers a cross-disciplinary, practical and process-oriented introduction to the field, showing not just what principles ought to apply to interaction design, but crucially how they can be applied.

An accompanying website contains extensive additional teaching and learning material including slides for each chapter, comments on chapter activities and a number of in-depth case studies written by researchers and designers.

602 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

99 people are currently reading
1,245 people want to read

About the author

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
194 (24%)
4 stars
274 (34%)
3 stars
238 (30%)
2 stars
62 (7%)
1 star
19 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
Profile Image for Erik.
421 reviews41 followers
March 21, 2015
Take a solid usability concept, slap an acronym on it, wait, then change it slightly and slap a new acronym in it, wait, then slice one piece out of it and give it it's own acronym, wait..lather, rinse, repeat.

Okay, that may be extreme, but that's how this book felt while I was reading it. Solid concepts explained repeatedly under different names. Usability engineering is not easy, but it doesn't need to be artificially inflated either. This book could be half its length and still get all points across just fine.
Profile Image for Justin.
53 reviews
February 22, 2008
It never fails to amaze me how so much of school is about formalizing terms for common sense. This book is no exception. There are some interesting bits (including analysis of interactions between users in online groups/clubs/games/orgies) and some interviews with usability and UI professionals, which I liked.
Profile Image for Jennifer.
61 reviews8 followers
May 13, 2014
While this book does have some helpful complements to my Interaction Design and Evaluating Interactive Systems course it does so in such a bland and boring manner that is all too common with school books. This book needs to be heavily edited for redundancy, to improve clarity and to overall be less of a snore so it can actually articulate the helpful information within without putting the reader to sleep.
Profile Image for Megan.
39 reviews3 followers
April 27, 2014
I assigned this book for my Human Computer Interaction course this semester. I like that it has a lot of relevant examples, and it focuses on important aspects of the field instead of trying to cover everything. It is a good overview, with enough meat to support a semester introductory HCI course. I wish their activities didn't have the answers on the same page though, as it makes it difficult to ask students to think through them as they read; it doesn't encourage independent thought. I also have mixed feelings about the chapter orderings; I like that evaluation was toward the back of the book as I just redesigned my course to fall in that order, but I still had to jump around in the second half of the course to get material in an order that made the most sense. However, I currently like it better than the Shneiderman textbook I used to use, and plan to use it again in the future.
Profile Image for Michele.
6 reviews2 followers
March 27, 2012
Lots of good stuff, but various examples were too subjective and didn't really cover most of the cases.
I have skipped some parts, I have to admit, since they were not useful to my research.
6 reviews
November 16, 2012
Great book with wonderful examples, case studies and online material.
Profile Image for Cold.
592 reviews13 followers
May 15, 2023
This book tries to define a new discipline, but ends up barely reaching under-graduate level in a diverse set of topics. The book starts by trying to understand humans, the task of the whole of the social sciences, and ends up rocketing off chapters on Behaviour, Emotion, Social Relations etc. It is something only a computer science adjacent field could do.

Still the book has some strong points. The chapter on emotional computing was great. I also like how the book provides a light summary of a bunch of research methods. I would set this for a new interdisciplinary PhD student who needed to see the scope of available quant and qual methods. Its also a great introduction to the language of design.

I don't know, some people will love it for the interdisciplinary vision, but it read like a bunch of cheap shortcuts to me. Hey ho.
Profile Image for Trừng Duyên.
58 reviews20 followers
August 3, 2018
Đây qu� là một câu chuyện buồn. Ước gì cuối mỗi chương có phần tóm tắt và đặt câu hỏi đ� focus trọng tâm một xíu. Ngoài ra sách nhiều ch� lan man hoặc do không hợp với khiếu đọc của mình, đọc sách thấy ch� áp dụng được mấy. Gi� đọc mới thấy học một đằng sách một nẻo. Mà ước gì có nhiều ví d� thực tiễn hơn, càng đọc càng chán nhưng vẫn phải đọc vì mai thi cuối kì...
This is a sad story. It is good if at the end of each chapter there is a summary and a question to focus a little. In addition, many books are rampant or not suitable for my reading hobby, studying in this books cannot apply to the reality. Now I realize that learning is a path and what was written in this book is a kind of another path.
The most unlikely is that the examples are not new, so easy to get bored.
Profile Image for Ash.
37 reviews
December 21, 2023
Keeps explaining concepts like as if the reader is a 3 year old. Not surprising considering the average IQ of anyone that finds HCI an interesitng enough field of study worth reading a book about. It's like trying to shoehorn common sense into the minds of individuals that clearly lack it. This book is a joke. Name something obvious as "x" now slightly make it sound like you know what you are talking about, make it sound like it's some revolutionary idea, and boom, you get this book. Pile of garbage, very few parts of it is actually useful. Looses all credibility when it first mentions "twitch," written by gaming nerds. Has a whole chapter dedicated to "social-interaction," even for a CS book this is down bad.
4 reviews
November 14, 2020
I read this as part of a course's material in university. This book does a good job providing an understanding about usability, user experience and the interaction design process.
The problem with it is that it sometimes feels a bit repetitive and some stuff are totally unnecessary.
Profile Image for Erica.
Author2 books5 followers
May 8, 2022
Interesting read, but crammed full of clunky terminology that's not explained very well.
Profile Image for Tom Quast.
27 reviews3 followers
February 4, 2023
A very thorough book about interaction design. It is textbooklike, somewhat dry and not meant to be read in one go, but if you use it for self study or similar it has presents many valuable concepts and methodologies.

The Good
- Covers a lot
- Summaries help to internalize learnings
- Includes many activities and assignments

The Bad
- Includes many activities and assignments
- 750+ pages

Conclusion
If you are studying interaction design it is one of the best books to get. However, if you want to read the book from front to back it will hinder the flow, since it is structured in these lessons.
Profile Image for Yong Qing Ru.
12 reviews5 followers
October 27, 2024
Read this for a course. Great overview of the whole UX field, from a more scientific and theoretical lens. Might not be so applicable in practice but I believe knowing some theories do help
Profile Image for Kieran Telo.
1,261 reviews28 followers
November 30, 2014
this is a set book for my OU module and while I stand by my earlier progress review the Achilles heel is how outdated it is. Its a quick moving field, of course, but the examples are sometimes quite laughably lame, and what the text implies are bold new web initiatives turn out to be defunct on more than one occasion. Having read a fair bit of the book now, in a non linear fashion, i have to say its pitched too low (e.g. explaining what the difference is between open and closed questions, gee, thanks!) and very very repetitive. The text repeats itself a lot too.
Profile Image for Karla Kitalong.
392 reviews3 followers
Read
August 7, 2011
I've assigned this book for my undergraduate course. It's hefty, but focused on usability/user-centered design, so I hope it will be a good choice. I'm not totally comfortable with the order of the chapters. Because I read the last 25% in 2011, and because I'll read it again alongside the students, I'm counting it as a 2011 book.
171 reviews8 followers
May 9, 2013
A set text from my recent degree, which I had to skip through to complete the study module within the time set. Having re-read it in detail I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone who wants a detailed understanding of Interaction Design processes.

The book comes with a great set of online study aids also, including video, powerpoint, and lots and lots of recommended further reading.
16 reviews1 follower
Read
October 11, 2007
Great textbook to understand the psychology of humans interacting with technology. How humans need to communicate within each other, getting involved emotionally utilizing technology as a very powerful tool.
171 reviews8 followers
June 26, 2011
As a set text this has proved very useful, although many of the reference sources are now out of date. This has proved a very thought-provoking and interesting introduction to the science of human computer interaction.
Profile Image for Timothy.
319 reviews21 followers
February 3, 2012
This isn't a strong subject for me; I enjoy reading about new interface models but find the best practices to be terribly boring. I do, however, want to recognize what a well-constructed textbook this is.
2 reviews
March 17, 2016
At my university we have the course "Interaction Design", where this book is reading material. I don't find the course too exciting, but the books is totally worth reading while taking the course. It covers a lot of areas.
Profile Image for Jan D.
166 reviews15 followers
March 18, 2023
Well, its an academic introductory textbook � but a good one. The formatting makes sense, there are many illustrations and it does justice to its topic that is a strange mix of psychology, anthropology, computer science and design.
42 reviews
February 3, 2017
I enjoyed reading this book. It is easy to understand and to teach to other people.
34 reviews
September 3, 2020
Felt like an encyclopaedia of terms and definitions from the field of interaction design, and did not provide any further insight into the field. What I found somewhat interesting was the occasional historic information and the interviews with various interaction design pioneers.
Profile Image for Neil.
150 reviews6 followers
January 30, 2009
I am reading this book for a class of the same name. So far I really like it. Easy to read with good information. I wish the class I read it for was as good as the book.
Profile Image for Marty Tormoe Yo.
7 reviews3 followers
January 22, 2009
It's a very good book if you are in this field. I agree with most of their research though it is quickly becoming dated.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.