Book review: Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction by Ben Shneiderman (Addison-Wesley, 1987)

This is Ben Shneiderman's new textbook to replace his classic Software Psychology from 1980 and as such it has been eagerly awaited - at least by me. Compared with the 1980 book, the 1987 book (actually published in the summer of 1986) is a big step forward: It has a considerably clearer organization and much better coverage of important issues such as interaction styles and manuals. This improvement is in itself a proof that our field has made real progress in this decade. The new book has more of a focus on user interfaces for end users, while the 1980 book (as implied by its name) included much more material on the human factors of the programming process itself.