The bloopers include mistakes in window design, labeling consistency, visual/grammatical parallel construction, coherence of look and feel, and clarity. Most perceptively, Johnson observes that CPU speed in the development group hides many design mistakes. Moreover, context-scoping, already a subtle problem in software design, must be implemented in GUI design. Input error handling is the most psychologically sensitive of all GUI design characteristics. User error messages can easily be too vague or too specific, and diagnostic error messages should be user-manageable, if not actually user-interpretable.

Like the Hollywood outtakes that gave us the "blooper," the entertainment quotient here is measured in mistakes, not successes. Teaching by counter example rather than by example at an estimated ratio of three to one, Johnson panders to our invertebrate instinct to measure our own successes by someone else's failure. To his credit, he recognizes that user interfaces include pedestrian texts (like his) as well as graphical interfaces for computer applications. His self-referential style gives the book an egocentric slant, but he is both priest and practitioner: he submitted a draft to usability testers and reports the results in an appendix. One criticism was that there were too many negative examples. Hmmm.

Thanks to other tester comments, GUI Bloopers is a browsable book, allowing the few nuggets of wisdom to be located. For the most part, the book's value can be captured by reading the seven-page table of contents carefully. --Peter Leopold

Product Description
GUI Bloopers looks at user interface design bloopers from commercial software, Web sites, and information appliances, explaining how intelligent, well-intentioned professionals made these dreadful mistakes--and how you can avoid them. While equipping you with all the theory needed to learn from these examples, GUI expert Jeff Johnson also presents the reality of interface design in an entertaining, anecdotal, and instructive way.

This is an excellent, well-illustrated resource for anyone whose work touches on usability issues, including software engineers, Web site designers, managers of development processes, QA professionals, and usability professionals.

Hear Jeff Johnson's interview podcast on software and website usability at the University of Canterbury (25 min.)

* Takes a learn-by-example approach that teaches you to avoid common errors by asking the appropriate questions of your own interface designs.
* Includes two complete war stories, drawn from the author's personal experience, that describe in detail the challenges faced by UI engineers.
* Covers bloopers in a wide range of categories: GUI components, layout and appearance, text messages, interaction strategies, Web site design, responsiveness issues, management decision-making, and even more at www.GUI-bloopers.com.
* Organized and formatted based on the results of its own usability testing--so you can quickly find the information you need, packaged in easily digested pieces.
*Announcing the sequel: Web Bloopers. Totally devoted to the Web. Go to www.web-bloopers.com.

Johnson gives us a widget-by-widget tour of labels, text fields, buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, and overall layout management. But he doesn't stop there. The notion of usability also extends into issues like consistency. Even more important is responsiveness, the chapter on which is worth the price of the book alone.

What makes this book so enjoyable is the multitude of case studies. These aren't meant to make you laugh out loud like Lucille-Ball-botching-her-line bloopers, but rather to get you to concentrate on the bigger picture of usability. The longer case studies of Johnson's experience as a consultant on a set-top-box design project and a game interface project are interesting if you're thinking about working with or becoming an interface design consultant yourself.

Another benefit of the book is that it takes you through common and common sensical design strategies starting from needs analysis to paper prototyping to early focus group testing and refinement. The references to deeper studies in many of these areas are plentiful.

This book is more focused on GUIs than books like Ben Schneiderman's _Designing the User Interface_, which is a useful, thoughtful survey, but reads like a Ph.D. thesis compared to _GUI Bloopers_. Johnson is also focused on usability, in contrast to something like the _Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines_, which focuses exclusively on graphical layout issues, such as how many pixels to leave around 9 point sans serif font in a button and what color scheme to use for highlighted icons.

One final note: Johnson ate his own dog food and usability tested his book!


Most practical UI book I have read - excellent organisation   March 11, 2001
Daniel Moth (Seattle, WA)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

If your introduction to HCI was through one of the usual books by Hix, Dix, Schneiderman, Preece etc this book will come as a breath of fresh air. Unlike other books on the subject, this one is not academic and in fact it has one of the most practical approaches I have come across. Not groundbreaking like "About Face", but certainly more useful to everyday developers.

After going through the theory in the first chapter, the author lists 82 GUI bloopers organised in logical sections, grouped under 7 chapters - thus making the book easily searchable. At first you might think that the book provides a few laughs at the expense of GUI screen shots from software applications publicly available. It certainly does that and it is very entertaining from that point of view, but that is just a side effect of the real value it offers.

Every blooper is described in terms of why it is wrong, accompanied with screen shot examples and reasons why a developer might have committed the mistake. It finishes off by describing the remedy to the blooper and providing GUI solutions for the screenshots that were 'named and shamed' earlier. The approach is very instructive but not overbearing.

Categories include GUI components, layout & appearance, textual, interaction and responsiveness bloopers. Believe me: these are not extreme GUI errors that we never commit; read this book and prepare to be enlightened. It has earned a place on my reference shelf and I am already referring back to it every now and then. We are also using it as a checklist for UI products in Alpha/Beta development and for assisting in the production of a new in-house style guide.


Excellent advice; This book needed to be written   January 17, 2001
Michael A Mayo (Brooklyn, NY United States)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

GUI Bloopers details a set of very specific ways developers commonly misuse specific GUI elements. Most of the bloopers are "minor" mistakes that are easy to make. For example, incorrectly "greying out" inactive controls and using text fields to display text that isn't editable. However, Jeff Johnson makes a powerfull case that these "minor" errors can have a major effect on usability.

The details cover a broad range of topics relevent to almost any computing professional. Web programmers will enjoy the _extensive_ discussion of the proper use of form elements. Web designers will welcome the section on the proper use of text vs graphics. Traditional applications programmers will like the section on performance and responsiveness.

Given the very specific nature of the advice, GUI Bloopers doesn't help much with overall, high-level user interface design. For advice of that nature, check out Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface." What Bloopers DOES provide are some additional details to think about when implementing your UI. It also has good advice on development methodology, including the importance of early and frequent user testing.

And this book definetly needed to be written; I identified _MANY_ of the bloopers in my current (fortunately unfinished) application. It also finally convinced me to include user testing in my development process, after several other UI books failed to persuade me of its importance.

My only problems with the book are really more the editor's fault than the author's. Firstly, GUI Bloopers can be overly wordy. For example, Johnson spends 6 pages struggling to get across the idea that extremely small font sizes are bad. Some good editing could probably have reduced the page count by 15%-25%. Also, none of the illustrations have captions explaining what they represent (only numbers), forcing readers to scan the text for references to "figure #21". A decent editor would have pointed this out.

However, harvesting the advice in GUI Bloopers is worth a little rubbernecking. Unless you happen to be a usability guru or quasi-genius, reading GUI Bloopers will definetly improve the usability of your applications.


An Essential Guide. Buy It.   May 24, 2000
Robin Kinkead
15 out of 16 found this review helpful

You might be put off by the title - "'Bloopers'? I don't want to know what NOT to design, I want to know WHAT to design." That was my initial reaction. I was looking for a good intro to GUI for a graduate-level course and didn't want to teach by negative example. Well, fret not. Although he uses negative examples, Johnson does it extremely well and buttresses each yang with the yin of positivity - what the design should have done, and why it went wrong. The result is easily the best of the current crop of 'how to design GUIs' texts. It is readable, well-organized, and covers all the basics. I do not agree with the other Amazon reviews which question the negative slant and Johnson's frequent self-references. For me they fit right in and are appropriate. Finally, a usability book which was usability tested, the results used in editing the book, and the whole process reported in an appendix. Marvelous.


An Essential Book for GUI Builders   April 9, 2000
17 out of 19 found this review helpful

Computers and similar devices are the constant butt of jokes for one reason: bad interface design. The problem is that most professional programmers are amateur interface designers, and it shows. And it hurts.

This book is by a pro whose career has been spent in designing interfaces and correcting the errors others make. He knows what he's doing, and we'd all be a lot better off taking his advice.

If you are designing information-based products that interact with people, you should first understand every point GUI Bloopers makes. This is a how-to, with lots of good examples, clearly explained. It is neither a work of psychology nor does it delve deeply into reasons why things work or don't. Read GUI Bloopers along with Norman's delightful book, The Design of Everyday Things (for motivation) and Raskin's thoughtful and thought-provoking The Humane Interface (for future directions).

This book made it instantly into the short list of my top recommended books for people who design interfaces. Get it, read it, follow it. Your customers will thank you.