Product Description

The honeymoon with digital technology is over: millions of users are tired of having to learn huge, arcane programs to perform the simplest tasks; fatigued by the pressure of constant upgrades, and have had enough of system crashes. In The Humane Interface, Jef Raskin -- the legendary, controversial creator of the original Apple Macintosh project -- shows that there is another path. Raskin explains why today's interface techniques lead straight to a dead end, and offers breakthrough ideas for building systems users will understand -- and love. Raskin reveals the fundamental design failures at the root of the problems so many users experience; shows how to understand user interfaces scientifically and quantitatively; and introduces fundamental principles that should underlie any next-generation user interface. He introduces practical techniques designers can use to improve their productivity of any product with an information-oriented human-machine interface, from personal computers to Internet appliances and beyond. The book presents breakthrough solutions for navigation, error management, and more, with detailed case studies from Raskin's own work. For all interface design programmers, product designers, software developers, IT managers, and corporate managers.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #137351 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Aptly subtitled "New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems", The Humane Interface is essentially an introduction to a new school of the craft of semiotics. Although the author doesn't use this specific term, The Human Interface, the book explores the intelligent design of efficient signs and symbols for the "conversation" between man and computer. The book deals with many types of conceptual devices we use, both to find our way to a piece of data or program function, and to set parameters for searches or other commands, investigating the various strategies used, evaluating them and proposing new, more powerful yet less complicated interfaces.

The author introduces new tactics for communicating information, both inward to and outward from a computer--but does not confine this overview to computers. Also under inspection are leads and displays on digital tools such as the oscillograph and the dials of technological commonplaces like the VCR that graces your living room.

For the person who has never broached the subject this is a great introduction to a field that badly needs a shake-up, and in the meantime it delivers some well-placed blows. Replete with criticisms and case studies of bad examples (as if they were needed), this book offers real solutions for designers of tomorrow, demonstrating how fresh ideas can be applied to simplify yet simultaneously enhance the interface between people and digital machines. If you've spent a frustrating afternoon reassigning cable or satellite stations to desired channels with the woeful interface usually provided, you'll immediately see the practical value of this refreshing book. --Wilf Hey

From the Back Cover

"Deep thinking is rare in this field where most companies are glad to copy designs that were great back in the 1970s. The Humane Interface is a gourmet dish from a master chef. Five mice!"
--Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group
Author of Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity

This unique guide to interactive system design reflects the experience and vision of Jef Raskin, the creator of the Apple Macintosh. Other books may show how to use today's widgets and interface ideas effectively. Raskin, however, demonstrates that many current interface paradigms are dead ends, and that to make computers significantly easier to use requires new approaches. He explains how to effect desperately needed changes, offering a wealth of innovative and specific interface ideas for software designers, developers, and product managers.

The Apple Macintosh helped to introduce a previous revolution in computer interface design, drawing on the best available technology to establish many of the interface techniques and methods now universal in the computer industry. With this book, Raskin proves again both his farsightedness and his practicality. He also demonstrates how design ideas must be built on a scientific basis, presenting just enough cognitive psychology to link the interface of the future to the experimental evidence and to show why that interface will work.

Raskin observes that our honeymoon with digital technology is over: We are tired of having to learn huge, arcane programs to do even the simplest of tasks; we have had our fill of crashing computers; and we are fatigued by the continual pressure to upgrade. The Humane Interface delivers a way for computers, information appliances, and other technology-driven products to continue to advance in power and expand their range of applicability, while becoming free of the hassles and obscurities that plague present products.

0201379376B07092001

About the Author

Jef Raskin (www.jefraskin.com) is a user interface and system design consultant based in Pacifica, California. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola, NCR, Xerox, Ricoh, Canon, McKesson, and AT&T all number among his clients along with dozens of less-well-known firms. His articles have been published in over forty periodicals including Wired, Quantum, IEEE Computer, and the Communications of the ACM. He is best known for having created the Macintosh at Apple and the Cat work processor for Canon.

0201379376AB04062001

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Customer Reviews

Excellent book, loses track in places
Jef Raskin presents a good overview of human machine interaction issues in the first few chapters. His superb coverage of interface modes, habit-formation, locus of attention and various worked quantitative analysis methods to measure interaction makes this book well worth its while alone... These are topics which are rarely covered this well.

I feel that the author loses focus slightly when he starts to talk about how he would implement a new computer interface. Without good examples, screenshots or user-reports from an implementation of these ideas we are largely left with the author's lengthy textual explananations which are sometimes hard to follow. It seems like the author is trying to make up for having the Macintosh project taken away from him. Constantly referring back to the dated "Canon Cat" which was a project he worked on, gets a bit tiresome; it would have been nice to see more modern applications of the authors ideas, many of which are extremely interesting (the ideas presented explain why nearly everyone finds Windows 2000's "adaptive" menus annoying). Despite this, the book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in human machine / human computer interfaces.

Singular reflections on the state and future of interaction
This book is both intriguing and arresting along a number of different dimensions. From the outset it is presented as one man's views, some idiosyncratic, of where things have gone wrong, and how things can be put right, in principle. It attempts to develop and assess a methodology (more of a series of heuristics)for human computer interaction by grounding the fundamental principles in aspects of cognitive theory, philosophy and even aesthetics. While many other texts recount the mechanics of HCI very directly, Raskin's reflections approach the various issues indirectly. Given the author's experience one would expect it to be a very competent text, but it goes beyond that and becomes a critical text with its own internal dialectic. And this is its major interest and significance - at times it reads as if assembled by a contintental philosopher of textual analysis. Raskin's central tenet is that interaction is more subtle than we have allowed for, and he sets off producing several singular examples of very poor design to illustrate the point. Peculiarly for a book that is clearly ergonomic in orientation and emphasis, it really only focuses on the GOMS model as the main method for pyschometric assessment of an interface. Also the book does not lay out a stall of the various task analysis methodologies that have evolved over the past twenty years. The book is not a 'how to' manual rather it is is an attempt at a 'philosophy of how to'. At this juncture, with increasing emphasis on multimodal interfaces,Raskin's book may be that bit more useful in the long run than the many alternatives.

This book feels dated and the author contradicts himself.
I bought this book as recommended reading for my degree course in computer science. I found it to be self serving as the author promotes his own work and insults other work. The author compares his idea against some already implemented device, but he always finds a way of making this device inefficient. To be honest i have not found this book to be any help at all.