With humor and thought-provoking insights, Bruce Tognazzini explores the central issues of human-computer interaction, including the challenges presented by multimedia applications, agents, virtual reality, and future technologies. Drawn from his long experience of working with developers, the book provides practical guidelines for developing successful applications that users will find simple, clear, and consistent.

"Tog on Interface" is fascinating reading for all those concerned with the relationship between people and computers.

Tog focuses on ways of thinking about human-computer interaction, using particular examples only to illustrate principles -- not outright dictating what an interface should look like. A few of his examples from the Mac OS are a little outdated (some of his columns were written before System 7), but those details are instructive in themselves when you examine their contrast to the current Mac OS in light of his principles, which are rock solid.

Tog and Cooper should be on every interface designer's shelf -- not one or the other, but BOTH.


Needed perspective for a programmer   September 7, 2006
R. Bush (Carmel, IN)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Want to write a brilliant applicatioin? Then think and process information the way your user will think and process, and design your application for them, not you! Easy concept to say and comprehend, but rather hard to actually do. Tog, through examples and descriptions, tells us how people think and process information. The not-so-surprising thing is that most code slingers think in conceptual ways that are not so common. Go figure. Tog really does help you understand how most others will process, and that understanding makes you a better developer.

My company makes these chapters on processing information a required reading for all new developers that join the company. It is that good. The Intuition quiz, the one that tries to help you see how your own brain stores and retrieves information, is an addiction for every new reader. Of course, one of the coded sayings "9 P in the SS" is dated. Today it should be written "8 P in the SS". Tomorrow it may change again.


A classic that's fun to read   October 16, 2003
Jonathan R. Price (Albuquerque, NM USA)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful

You'll get some good laughs, as you follow Tog through the complexities of designing some of the earliest, and still the best, interfaces out there...he was, as I recall, the Interface Czar at Apple when they were creating the Mac, then worked at Sun, and now is part of the Nielsen Norman Group. The book's good background for his site, AskTog.com. You'll get the basics, without the sour looks of some other interface gurus, and you'll get a sense of the way a leading designer interacted with the developers he had to persuade to follow his lead.


Great, but somewhat sheltered, writing   May 6, 2004
Christopher Coakley (Santa Barbara, CA United States)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

I am a big fan of AskTog, so I bought this book. Some of the information is a bit dated (and relates specifically to the old Macintosh), but much of it is sound design principles expressed informally (and in a readable way).

The presentation of the material is great. Even flipping quickly through the pages should turn up useful nuggets. If you have an interest in design evolution, this is a good read. If you want some good design principles easily explained, this is a good read. Many of his stories are condensed down into bolded, bulleted "rules" of design.

The one thing I didn't like about the book: Tog lives in a sheltered reality. If research shows something he disagrees with, he calls it bad research. If research supports his ideas, it is quickly pointed out as solid evidence. It is very important to read anything by Tog with a critical (but open) mind. Not all of his ideas have stood the test of time.

All things considered, this book is worth reading for developers and designers of any Visual Interface (Tog explains his distaste for the term "Graphical User Interface").


An insightful glimpse into development of user interfaces:   November 15, 1996
4 out of 8 found this review helpful

TOG on Interface is a good overview of the evolution of Human-Computer Interface design from the perspective of Apple products. The book is a collection of articles that Tognazzini wrote for an Apple developer's magazine. While reading, I had that feeling that coworkers at Apple talked Tognazzini into writing a column to try to keep him busy and out of the hallways evangelizing. Fortunately, he committed his thoughts to ink and shared them with the rest of us