Robert Reimann has spent the past 15 years pushing the boundaries of digital products as a designer, writer, lecturer, and consultant. He has led dozens of interaction design projects in domains including e-commerce, portals, desktop productivity, authoring environments, medical and scientific instrumentation, wireless, and handheld devices for startups and Fortune 500 clients alike. Joining Cooper in 1996, Reimann led the development and refinement of many goal-directed design methods described in About Face 2.0. He has lectured on these methods at major universities and to international industry audiences. He is a member of the advisory board of the UC Berkeley Institute of Design.

The first part on the Cooper Process is excellent and gives lots of insights and new information. The new chapter on Visual Design is a bit simplistic in my view, but if you know the matter you shouldn't be bothered by that.

All examples are updated and fresh. Some new pictures of Cooper project help in making the case. I particularly liked the interactive pie charts for example.

As the Web is moving towards Rich Internet application and the desktop applicatios are moving towards Rich Internet information applications this is the best and most up to date resource for Interaction Design we have at this moment.

I read it in a weekend. I bet you will too...


If I were king, you would *have* to read this book   March 31, 2003
Dave (Indiana)
51 out of 67 found this review helpful

I've been waiting for this book since I first heard about it from a friend last year. Now it's here and it's proving to be worth the wait. What I need to figure out now is, how can I make the designers of every software program I'll ever use read this book?

Hats off to Cooper and Reimann. You would think that their axioms are common sense, like "Never scroll text horizontally", or "If it's worth the user entering, it's worth the program remembering". But if those common sense ideas were actually common, why is there so much horrid software out there?


Tought medicine for most software developers   October 26, 2003
Frank Cohen (Campbell, CA United States)
20 out of 25 found this review helpful

When Alan Cooper wrote the first edition of About Face in 1997, the software industry was in the midst of its biggest change ever. Just about every new user interface was being created in the context of a Web browser. Cooper was the leading advocate to persuade software developers, graphic artists, usability designers, and interaction designers to avoid bringing the mistakes that got baked into desktop application software developing into Web development. His impact has been profound, but not very easy for most software developers.

Key to this book is to understand that it challenges software developers to consider a user's goals first. And the book means "a user", not all of the users, but a single user. I've been to Alan's presentations and you can see the software developers in the audience squirm in their seats. "Don't I have to build my software to work for the largest group of users?" they ask. Alan's book says "No. Instead, build for a single user, and make sure your work accomplishes their one goal." About Face might be better titled "User Goal Oriented Software Development."

The book's focus on "interaction design," as opposed to user interface design, matches the key theme of user goal oriented development. For example, when my printer runs out of ink a dialog box appears on my computer asking for me to put more ink into the printer and then click one of the following buttons: Finish and Continue. As the user, my goal is to Finish, but the software wants me to put more ink in the printer and then to Continue. Interaction Design addresses this problem, where user interface design would more likely tell the software developer where to place the buttons in the dialog box. Interaction design keeps the focus on user goals.

I loved the original book, and find the new release to be refreshing.

-Frank Cohen, www.pushtotest.com


the book for developers   May 22, 2003
Don Dickinson (Minneapolis, MN USA)
24 out of 34 found this review helpful

This is the first book and aspiring developer should read. It is also the next book they should read. After they get that big-bucks job and are writing code for a living ... read it again. When you finish a project, that would be a good time to pickup the book and see what of it applies to your "complete" software project. Alan has an engaging, no-nonsense style that is uniquely his. Like his first About Face and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, this book is loaded with sage advice.

Reading rev 1 of this book a few years back changed my view of how programmers should program and gave insight on how to design programs the correct way. The second release is sufficiently different so that it still a bargin for those that have the first one. The biggest impact of those not familiar with the value of software/interface designers will be the altered view-point you may emerge with. A programmer (as i have been for the last 20 years) tends to get tunnel vision. It's not that we think we're doing things badly and do it anyway; we just don't see the opportunities opened by taking a different viewpoint on the functionality and design of software. Alan and Robert Reimann effectively describe this "enlightened" view of software design through effective use of examples and critique.

A final point is that the book is somewhat granular. The chapters build somewhat on each other, but it is the kind of book that can be read a chapter at a time in any order.

Thanks Alan and Robert!