Designing Interfaces  (English, Paperback, Tidwell Jenifer)

Despite all of the UI toolkits available today, it's still not easy to design good application interfaces. This bestselling book is one of the few reliable sources to help you navigate through the maze of design options. By capturing UI best practices and reusable ideas as design patterns, Designing Interfaces provides solutions to common design problems that you can tailor to the situation at hand.

This updated edition includes patterns for mobile apps and social media, as well as web applications and desktop software. Each pattern contains full-color examples and practical design advice that you can use immediately. Experienced designers can use this guide as a sourcebook of ideas; novices will find a roadmap to the world of interface and interaction design.

• Design engaging and usable interfaces with more confidence and less guesswork
• Learn design concepts that are often misunderstood, such as affordances, visual hierarchy, navigational distance, and the use of color
• Get recommendations for specific UI patterns, including alternatives and warnings on when not to use them
• Mix and recombine UI ideas as you see fit
• Polish the look and feel of your interfaces with graphic design principles and patterns

"Anyone who's serious about designing interfaces should have this book on their shelf for reference. It's the most comprehensive cross-platform examination of common interface patterns anywhere."
--Dan Saffer, author of Designing Gestural Interfaces (O'Reilly) and Designing for Interaction (New Riders)

About the Author
Jenifer Tidwell has been designing and building user interfaces for industry for more than a decade. She has been researching user interface patterns since 1997, and designing and building complex applications and web interfaces since 1991.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. What Users Do
1. A Means to an End
2. The Basics of User Research
3. Users’ Motivation to Learn
4. The Patterns

Chapter 2. Organizing the Content: Information Architecture and Application Structure
1. The Big Picture
2. The Patterns

Chapter 3. Getting Around: Navigation, Signposts, and Wayfinding
1. Staying Found
2. The Cost of Navigation
3. Navigational Models
4. Design Conventions for Websites
5. The Patterns

Chapter 4. Organizing the Page: Layout of Page Elements
1. The Basics of Page Layout
2. The Patterns

Chapter 5. Lists of Things
1. Use Cases for Lists
2. Back to Information Architecture
3. Some Solutions
4. The Patterns

Chapter 6. Doing Things: Actions and Commands
1. Pushing the Boundaries
2. The Patterns

Chapter 7. Showing Complex Data: Trees, Charts, and Other Information Graphics
1. The Basics of Information Graphics
2. The Patterns

Chapter 8. Getting Input from Users: Forms and Controls
1. The Basics of Form Design
2. Control Choice
3. The Patterns

Chapter 9. Using Social Media
1. What This Chapter Does Not Cover
2. The Basics of Social Media
3. The Patterns

Chapter 10. Going Mobile
1. The Challenges of Mobile Design
2. The Patterns

Chapter 11. Making It Look Good: Visual Style and Aesthetics
1. Same Content, Different Styles
2. The Basics of Visual Design
3. What This Means for Desktop Applications
4. The Patterns

Appendix References
1. Websites
2. Books

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