Human-Computer Interaction Books

The author was space crazy as a child. He imagined a future among the stars. Children are accompanied by toys. This has been happening for seven thousand years. Toys now represent the science of materials and digital communication. Our relationship to information in the world is changing.

Edison invented the first talking toy. Nolan Bushnell, Atari, fathered pop interactivity. All interactive toys need sensors and affectors. The Furby was an enormously engaging toy. It seemed to have facial expressions and a capacity for about one thousand utterances in pidgin--Furbish.

In Artificial Intelligence studies Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, Marvin Minsky, and Terry Winograd were pioneers. AI encountered roadblocks as researchers grappled with characteristics such as intuition. Robots appear in the world of toys including Lego Mindstorm, 1998, half of which were purchased for use by adults.

Richard Feynman accurately predicted miniaturization in a paper published in 1959. The author cannot imagine doing his work without the world wide web. Ted Nelson invented hypertext. He didn't have access to a computer. He befriended Any van Dam. Nelson's text and van Dam's code came together in a simple application. Englebart of Stanford had a more mature hypertext product.

Each innovation helps humanity do more with less according to Buchminster Fuller. Connectivity can enhance citizenship, among other things.

I purchased and read this book with the hopes of learning about the cutting edge of technology and how it's affecting us culturally. This book may have weakly accomplished that lesson when it was first published, but its (necessary?) reference to techno-ephemera of the late 90's strikes a dull, anachronistic chord for a reader not three years after its date of publishing.

For an example, Pesce devotes _multiple_ chapters to discussing the Furby. He, himself, acknowledges the blisteringly fast pace of technology, so it is not suprising that his detailed account of the creation and marketing of this toy is tragically trite and (to use the word as unsnobbishly as possible) passe.

After enduring these first chapters I hoped the book might address more general aspects of technology, but instead it becomes a personal travelogue of Pesce's (not the least bit compelling) contributions to cyberspace. If he relayed these events with the perceptive knack of modern historians, his anecdotes might prove worthwhile, but instead they read like a desperate attempt of his "trying to find a place for himself" in the story of the development of modern technology.

This book brought me very few new perspectives and even fewer new facts. I strongly discourage anyone from investing time or money into this book if you're approaching it with the objectives I did.

"The Playful World" is a fascinating tome by author Mark Pesce, one of the foremost practical techno wizards of our time. The creator of VRML (virtual reality mark-up language) Pesce's visions are creating a new immersive society and info-mediaries for today and tomorrow. Pesce helps you learn how to pretend again-- how to make believe and use those skills to build new bridges to the future whether you're involved in tech or whether you just want to understand the next generation of anything -- people, places and things. Pesce tackles tough topics and adds an amusing presentation to help you understand such concepts as distributed intelligence, engineered structures and yes, toys.
Pesce maintains it started with the FURBY -- you remember those little gremlin like creatures form Tiger Electronics a few holiday seasons ago don't you? He says they are the beginning of being able to embody human intelligence into the machine world (at least the beginning of what we can see on our store shelves). IA -- intelligence augmented is probably more likely than AI artificial intelligence but as our devices get smarter and our phones know where are kids and colleagues are, it's comforting to think that you can learn to USE technology not have it replace YOU!. Pesce is optimistic that the new 'synthetic worlds will create a gateway to a living planet'. It's all just a few years ahead-- this book will serve as a bridge of knowledge to tomorrow and make you think about ordinary objects in extraordinary ways.

The Playful World is a fascinating look at the future of computers and nanotechnology, and of wonders which may very well come to pass in the next decade or so (If Moore's Law continues to hold true, by 2012 we'll have reached the atomic level, and there will be supercomputers the size of a grain of sand). Pesce has been involved in the forefront of some of these advances, so he knows his stuff, and his enthusiasm for the potentials of this field is evident throughout the book. If the book has a fault, it is that he downplays or ignores the dangers inherent in the use of this technology, e.g., what's to prevent someone from releasing "spy dust", or clouds of nano-cameras, into an area, or billions of nano-surgeons to lobotomize an entire population? This book may be nothing new for those already immersed in the computer field, but for anyone else, it is required reading.

This is a book I wish I had written. When I picked up this book, I was amazed at how many subjects Mark covered that I was interested in too. Everything from Lego Mindstorms, Eric Drexler's Nanotechnology, Richard Feynman's talk on "More room at the bottom" that was the inspiration for Nanotechnology and many more. This book covers so much ground and describes many very interesting ideas and technologies. Pesce was the designer of VRML, Virtual Reality Modeling Language, which enables web pages to display 3D scenes and has been involved in the forefront of emerging technology for a while, so he is very qualified to give us the whirlwind tour of these "Mind Toys".

He takes off from where Seymour Papert's Mindstorms left us with technologies that create toys that help us to develop our mental models of the world. Toys that make us think.

As a generation of children grow up playing with Lego Mindstorms, Furbys, AIBO's etc.. they will develop their mental faculties that will come into play as they define the future.

I grew up with a BBC micro and started programming adventure games in BASIC, which opened up a whole new world to me. As a generation we played computer games while growing up. These were rich interactive environments that left us feeling unchallenged in a schooling system, which was still geared towards to old teaching techniques. These techniques seemed totally inadequate in coping with children who could solve complex mathematical problems at home whilst programming. So I am not sure how the schools of today handle children who are building robots and playing with toys that they can not only interact with, but ones which can learn and change as they are interacted with.

Do we need to change the way we approach education? Instead of complaining that children have MTV (Short) attention spans, we should be creating an education system that can cope with the speed at which these young minds are working at. I think we should be encouraging children to be thinking faster and day dreaming and using their imaginations, instead of trying to get them to fit an out dated model that will leave them totally unprepared for an ever more complex world.

I digress, but these are thoughts that come to mind while reading this book, as you whisked off on this tour of future mind toys.

If you can't tell, I love this book! Anyone interested in toys that can help them or their children think, should read this book.

I was disappointed when I got my pre-order of this book. At a scant 160 pages, I was skeptical that it could offer very much insight.

On reading it, I was proven correct. Much of the book was nothing more than an extended advertisement for Adaptive Path. Case studies were too short to learn much from. The only case study really discussed in depth was of Target's new prescription bottles, which have been discussed more in depth and more usefully in too many other books.

The book's eight chapters are full of short sections; many of them read as though they are blog entries. They're strung together with little regard for content or context. The seventh chapter, a flawed discussion of agile development, is completely worthless. The book could have been so much better if the authors had taken the time and effort to better consider their arguments and write a more cohesive work.

If you can look past the book's many shortcomings, there are some interesting nuggets in there. Sadly, the useful bits comprise less than 10% of the book, but they're good enough to earn this book two stars.

'Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World' is a good book for thinkers, innovators, and product managers alike. Looking at different ideas throughout history, this book examines how good ideas come about and the work that goes into them. A lot of it is innovation, a lot of it is luck, but as with everything else in life, examining others fortunes and misfortunes is a good way to learn and make good decisions of your own. From looking at lots of case studies packaged in a nice hand held book and smooth writing, this is a good read.

**** RECOMMENDED

Sooner or later, every developer out there gets sick of the long hours, the process, the verification and the deadlines. Even if we've naturally gravitated towards leadership, the clarion call of management is strong- it's perceived as advancement (potentially into a C* role), comes with the benefit of fewer long hours, you have people you can boss around... all in all good things when looked at in the right light. Yet most developers end up in Development Management, which ends up being more about estimates and balancing resources (aka beancounting), rather than Product Management, which continues apace with the thing I love most about being a Developer: Building Stuff.

When my User Groups' book shipment from O'Reilly came in with a complementary copy of Adaptive Path's "Subject to Change" I was intrigued. From the title, the book is about "Creating great products and services for an uncertain world". It claimed to be a book book that seemed to be all about how to create and manage a product in the everchanging world of the internet. Now, it turns out that my initial enthusiasm was a little naive, since the argument presented in the book was substantially different than what I was expecting. In fact, one of its chapters is titled `Stop Designing "Products"`, which made me more than a little concerned.

Yet having said that, and taking into account the often blatant plugs for Adaptive Path, it turns out the book was exactly what I needed, even though it wasn't exactly what I was looking for.

Chapter 1 lays out the foundation of the argument, which is that customers aren't attracted to features, they're attracted to an experience. Note that this does not mean bells and whistles - I can have an experience at a circus, but that's not what I'm looking for in a laptop. Instead, it is critical to look at what your customer is actually trying to accomplish, and to make the experience of accomplishing that task as positive as possible. Layering on feature after feature is good only if the original intended task experience is not compromised, otherwise it simply adds noise to what should be an all-signal experience. In other words, good products are well designed, by which they don't mean pretty, nor that they have an elegant software implementation. Design is instead used in the inclusive sense- all aspects of the product, experience and execution are carefully considered and integrated into one seamless whole.

This foundation is then built on in Chapter 2 by presenting the idea that the aforementioned experience is a strategic decision, and then clearly defining what that does and does not mean. Those of you who are trying to achieve some flavor of competitive advantage (aka differentiation aka edge etc etc) should definitely read this chapter, because it provides a long list of clarifications given the context. Quite frankly, the whole thing reads like a snopes article that slowly dismantles many lessons learned in academic marketing classes. My favorite one is the ideal of Parity - the misconception that a product can be competitive simply by matching features with the competition. See, a feature is simply that: An implemented piece of functionality on a product spec sheet. If accessing and using said feature requires an advanced degree in astrophysics doesn't matter; the mere fact that the feature exists makes the product competitive.

With the supporting framework of their argument is clearly established, and Chapter 3 puts in context of previously established marketing approaches. When your focus is on the experience and the user's motivations, habits such as market segmentation rapidly get turned upside down. You can no longer assume that the consumer is some faceless drone who exists to give you money, but instead have to give that person a face, a background a motivation, and an objective. A segment rapidly evolves into a persona, and eventually loses its distinction altogether- you're no longer sculpting your message for a particular group or persona, but are instead approaching individuals to discover how you can best meet their needs and improve their experience.

Yet none of this can be accomplished without information, which is usually garnered by research (Chapter 4). Interestingly enough, the book does not necessarily go into individual research methods, but focuses more on the importance of qualitative over quantitative research and the need to involve every team member. Research, as is stated, too often happens in a strategy or research group independent of the team that will actually implement their findings, and thus the opportunity for consumer or persona empathy is lost within minutes of the powerpoint presentation. It is only by keeping everyone involved up front (though perhaps not directly contributive) that information gained is relevant, actionable, and provides durable insight.

Chapter 5 then takes us full circle back to the beginning, and really drives the idea that success is not driven by features, capabilities or marketing, but by the experience of the customer. It's not just the experience of completing a specific task that is meant here, but the entire support system ancillary to that task. You might have an iPod, but without an iTunes all you have is a pretty piece of plastic. Find out what the customer wants to accomplish, figure out what it'll take to perform all steps of that, and build a system to do so simply and elegantly.

At this point, the book could have ended and been a pretty effective piece on product design theory based on experience. It has taken us from the initial presentation of the idea all the way through the strategic advantage and full circle back to the beginning. Instead, it continues on and picks apart the actual implementation strategies, beginning with Design in Chapter 6. This is a beast of a chapter and not for the faint of heart, but is nevertheless utterly critical for understanding the depth of the argument. Design is picked apart by discipline, target, competency, strategic importance and implementation, and the chapter itself does a remarkable job breaking down common misconceptions. Design is necessary, strategic, and is presented as a mindset rather than a discipline, one that everyone must implement to properly contribute to the delivery.

Chapter 7 then goes into the nitty gritty of implementation by speaking about agile development methods. This is where the developer in me went squee, because for the first time I saw Agile presented within a strategic context rather than a reactive context. Too often when management hears "Agile Development" the first thing that comes to mind is "Development will be faster", or more responsive, and in many cases this is true. Even so, the book presents it as an integral part of experience based design, and discusses how its rapid iterative nature can be used to convert a design or motion prototype iteratively into a fully functioning application, while allowing user research and experience evaluation (and revision) at every step of the way. If you've ever had to say "That's what's written in the requirements, we can't change it now" this chapter is for you. Lets face it- issues and problems will arise during development no matter what happens, but if you keep everyone on deck (and not siloed into different expertise groups) you'll be able to confront it much faster.

And with that, Chapter 8 closes the book. I'd copy the two pages that compose it here verbatim if I didn't think there'd be conflict of interest issues, but safe it to say that it is the conclusion and summary of the entire book. The only thing certain is change, and here's how you deal with it.

Overall, a very good book, but I do have a few pointed comments. First of all, the cases presented within the book too often follow the pattern of "Here's company X, known as a genius at Y, and here's their process/methodology/etc." The academic in me chokes at statements like that, because they imply causality - that their process is the reason why they are so well known and respected, when in reality it could be something completely different. The book itself warns of making surface level assumptions like that, so I'm fairly irritated that they do so themselves.

The other one is the mixture of authoring tones. At times casual, at times formal, it's clear that more than one person wrote this book. When I'm reading a structured section about research and am suddenly approached in a conversational tone, my brain kicks me out of the narrative (and thus my experience with the book is diminished). Even so, I'd recommend this book to any marketer, strategist, developer... or, well, anyone who plays a role in a product production process. At 165 pages it's a light read, the ideas are straightforward and well explained, and though they aren't often supported as rigorously as I would prefer, the book itself make an excuse for that: If you spend too much time backing up your argument, you lose the time you'd spend on determining where your argument should take you.

I'm 100 painful pages in to this 160 page book that seems so far to be at least 100 pages too long. In a nutshell: think about design. Oh - and think different. There. You don't have to buy one. The "quotes-by-interesting-people" sprinkled throughout the book only serve to show you that meaningful ideas and insightful thoughts lie elsewhere - in other books that you've probably ALREADY READ. I am forcing my way through it just to see if there's a twist that reveals this isn't just an painfully long and patronizing Adaptive Path credentials presentation.

This book makes the business case for user experience design (UX). It shows how businesses need to think about designing compelling, positive experiences for people, not merely products and services. It is a fine book, and more important, a timely one.

Design, the book argues, is a competitive advantage and should be a core organizational competency. In the past this argument was rarely understood. Today, you simply must understand it. This book will help anyone who doesn't understand it yet, who doesn't really get it, and that means most of the business world.

It reminded me of The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper. Written a decade ago, Inmates made the business case for interaction design (ID). "Subject to Change" makes a similar case for user experience design (UX; the distinctions between ID and UX and information architecture (IA) are decidedly blurry).

I think this book does a better job.

For one reason, the scope is broader, more holistic, and more integrated. This kind of perspective couldn't have been introduced a decade ago. Back then, few of us, even the most prescient of us, truly understand how deeply our lives would change once the connections between our digital tools and information artifacts -- the Web, iPods, laptops, blogs, wifi, cell phones, email, wikis, etc -- became sufficiently rich, pervasive, and continuous. This picture is becoming more clear every day. "Subject to Change" synthesizes the design-thinking approach that has emerged in recent years, reflecting not only changes in technology but also our adoption and uses of technology, and explaining what this means for business.

Subject to Change also has a more positive tone than Inmates. From the title on down, Inmates seemed born of frustration and anger. It always struck me as an odd title given the audience. The book was clearly aimed at business, yet the tone seemed aimed at our personal experience of technology. Business people are not, in a business context, angry with technology. They're afraid of it. They don't see a clear path through the digital thicket.

"Subject to Change" explains the path offered by experience design. It argues that this approach is both necessary and obvious, and that other paths are insignificant in comparison or no longer offer much of a competitive advantage (though eventually, as with everything in business, once enough people adopt a UX mindset, this advantage will be lessened and the search for new ones will go on).

Business is the primary audience for this book. It is not aimed specifically at designers.

Yet it will also speak to many practitioners in the field, and students as well. I teach IA, ID, and UX in a university graduate program. I routinely encounter students struggling to understand of what this field is about. Part of my job is to give them a broader perspective. This book will make my job a lot easier.

I have my critiques of the book, but they're mostly academic or fall outside the authors goals for this book. For example, ethical aspects of how integrated experiences, like the iPod, create their own kind of lock-in that adroitly couple technological, cultural, economic, and psychological forces. Another critique is the business-centric nature of the book. There is almost no mention the important of UX to non-commercial and public-service settings: education, government, libraries, NGOs, etc.

But these are not useful critiques because they attack the book for being something it, quite clearly, is not intended to be. Valid criticisms are not necessarily useful ones.

The ideas underlying user experience design (as well as interaction design and information architecture) need to be understood more widely. And accepted. And become a core part of how we design our world. Right now, this is one of the best books that explains the value of this approach.

It is a solid piece of work, and a timely, necessary contribution.

Scoring in the game of interaction design is very simple. You get 0 points for discovering the obvious and making it easy for the user and -10,000 points for missing it.

This book should be the bible for companies trying to turn their software products around.

If you only get one book on interaction design, this is the one.

I picked up the second edition when I was just starting out as an interaction designer; it was a great primer and filled in a lot of the missing pieces for me. Now that I've been at it a while, it's still the book I go to whenever I have a question. I found the book reads well cover to cover, and also serves well as a handbook. The info you need on a topic is usually well contained in a section.

Not only does this book cover the general principles and theory behind interaction design, but also provides lots of real-world practical information. The writers call on designers not simply to follow rigid interaction design rules, but to create elegant, informative and respectful interfaces. That's a loftier goal, and this book give you the tools to attain it. The updated edition also spans new technologies and paradigms that have emerged, and covers them thoroughly.

Cooper has an unrivaled depth of experience to draw on, creating a truly comprehensive book.

This third edition is my first exposure to "About Face", though I certainly wish I had encountered it earlier! New computer interfaces tend to be rehashes of previous computer interfaces, and sometimes the old wasn't very well designed. Why copy it?

Even if you don't change anything you're doing with interface design after reading this book, you will surely be more conscious of the decisions you are making, and why. A must-read for anyone building software used by real people.

At every chapter in this book I thought, "Well this book's been worthless so far, but I think it gets better in the next chapter." I thought that until the last (26th) chapter, which was actually half-decent. I've never been so disappointed in a book. Any designer with the slightest bit of experience will learn nothing from this book. Nearly every piece of advice is trite ("Design principle: Use noneditable controls for output-only text"). There's very little depth or thinking beyond the completely obvious. You will learn more from any other book (on any topic) than from this book. If you've already bought it, you should skip to the chapters with non-zero value. I recommend chapter 5 (personas), chapter 16 (undo), chapter 17 (save), and chapter 26 (misc). The section on perpetual intermediates is good too.

I finished the book 10 minutes ago after a very tedious three months. I can finally put it on the shelf and never look at it again.

I read (and still have) the previous two editions of this book. Unlike the usual "complete revised and updated" hype for new editions, this one has had some serious re-work and expansion.

The whole structure of the book is new and very close to being a complete course/textbook in the Cooper approach to Goal-based Design. All the sections have been expanded based upon reactions to the previous version(s) as well as their collective experience. The most obvious changes are towards describing in greater detail the process and how to integrate it into the large design/development cycle.

For those who have not read (about) Cooper (and his firm's) work, this book is the complete approach in detail. It is written for professional UI designer and developers and makes some assumptions about the background of the reader.

Executives, stakeholders or those needing a more general overview should pick up his other book "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" which was written for that audience. That book includes more business cases and rationale without the heavy details.

As a UI professional for over 20 years find his approach to be the most useful in creating truly useful and usable applications. This book continues to point out how get beyond mere incremental design enhancements to truly revolutionary and winning designs.

I've been working through this book for quite some time, and now that I've extracted all i can I have to declare myself delighted with it. The examples are good, deep enough to convey the lessons but shallow enough that not too much is irrelevant. I now have, as the author promised, several applications that will compile easily under both linux and win32. If i can fault the book at all , my only reservation is that is would have been nice to see all the necessary software included on the cd. Downloading all of the required applications and libraries (particularly for windows) led to a treasure hunt accross the web. That aside I would recommend this book to anyone who is not new to programming and databases, a little prior knowledge will be required as this is definately not a complete beginners book.

Let me say this right away: This is a good book. If you already know your way around MySQL and have at least a basic knowledge of C, you'll very quickly get up to speed in creating a MySQL GUI (GTK+) application for your co-workers or your client.
The introduction lays out some of the foundations, and the reader is warned that some skills are required before delving deeper into the book: Basic knowledge of C, SQL, Linux are all required to gain anything from this book. Some experience in VB, Delphi or other form-based IDEs will also give you a good start on the book.
The first section of the book gives a good run-down on MySQL, GTK+ and Glade. There are a few non-critical errors in the text (stating that a MySQL table is limited to 50 mio. records; claiming that Qt is not free, although the Qt/X11 is released under the GPL). The chapters on GTK+ also give the reader the first taste of the author's preference on using page upon page of commented source, rather than explanatory body text.
The second section is a walk-through of three Real-world implementations. The first is a relatively simple order entry application; the second a commissions calculation application and the third a fairly complex report generator. In all three examples, the focus is primarily on Glade and GTK+, and very little mention is made of MySQL.
The third section is a short discussion on using the XML files generated by Glade, which may -- in some very specific cases - allow the programmer to make changes to an application without recompiling a project. This discussion really is too short, and I wonder whether the reader might be confused more than helped by this chapter. These pages could have been of much better use if the author had spent some more time discussing security issues in MySQL and applications, something which this books sorely lacks. There is some discussion on the subject, but it's much too short and general.
One thing I really like about the examples is the "running commentary" on how to distribute programs, moving from a simple "copy the executable" over "make install" and ending up at "building an RPM".
I like examples, and a good tutorial should contain a lot of them. Some of the code examples in the book are very good -- those where a small section of a program is shown, and each important line of code is emphasized and explained. In this book, the author has chosen to give us page up and page down of program listings, which, although well commented in-line, make for extreme terse reading. More than half the book is comprised of program listings, and that's not counting the last 150+ pages making up the appendix, consisting solely of program listings. I have serious doubts that anyone will ever be reading these.
The title of the book is, unfortunately, very badly chosen. "MySQL" suggests that you can only use this book with the MySQL DBMS, even though many of the SQL examples are really quite general in scope; "Building User Interfaces" suggests that this book contains a general discussion on UI, while it is in fact very heavily centered on GTK+. The layout of the front page also suggests that the main focus on the book is MySQL, which is not true -- only about 25% of the contents are set off for discussing MySQL, the rest of the book is about Glade and GTK.
If you're coming from a Windows/MS-Access background and wish to know more about writing GUI applications for MySQL, program deployment, this book is definitely for you. If you've never worked with MySQL (or any other SQL database), you should get some more experience before getting this book.
I'm giving five stars for the contents minus one for a misleading title page.

I'm not sure where all of these 5 and 4 stars are coming from. This book is absolutely horrible at addressing UI design. Half of the book is C code for GTK applications that could have been made available on a companion disk or on the website. And most of Stucky's explanation of things comes in the form of very brief comments embedded within the code. Lots of typos. Lots of butchered examples. No general GUI concepts covered. No coverage of multithreading issues. You're basically getting three non-real-world examples' code bound in a book and hardly any coverage of general user interface design concepts and ideologies. The title should have been "Beginner's Guide to Using GTK with MySQL and Glade".

Mathew Stucky has written an interesting book on building Graphical User Interfaces that interface to the MySQL database. As such, it is a nice follow-on to MySQL by Paul Dubois. This book seems to be primarily aimed at VB developers (or similar GUI development frameworks) who wish to build GUI applications using MySQL as the backend. While MySQL runs on a wide range of different platforms, being an open-source product, it is extremely popular on Linux.

The book tackles many different user interface projects in a consistent manner, starting with a problem definition, followed by designs of the UI and database, and concluding with an analysis of the application. The main complaint I had with the book is that it really discusses only one approach to building user interfaces to MySQL, completely ignoring the web interface, which could be built with PHP, JSPs, or even applets. Thus the title is somewhat misleading. Finally, the reader does need a fairly hefty background before starting this book.

This book will guide you very well through learning the wrong database.

Yes, I've read the book (long ago). It helped me to learn MySQL. It even made me an advocate of MySQL. But I didn't know the first thing about what makes a database work. I was following the masses of new web developers, ignorantly flocking to MySQL.

If you need fantastic speed, rock-solid reliability and -- more importantly -- a true understanding of how real RDBMS systems work, learn and use PostreSQL. It runs circles around MySQL! (We use it to support web services in 20 countries).

PostgreSQL will look far better on your resume than will MySQL. When I see PostgreSQL listed on a candidate's resume, I know (if the candidate is truly postgres-savvy) s/he can be counted on to work with virtually any database we support.

Modern technology may ably supply the equipment and new convenience features people desire, but lacks the ability to consider or correct human error in using it. Kim Vicente argues for the need for technology that works easily for its users in his The Human Factor: Revolutionizing The Way People Live With Technology, which goes beyond argument to pint out how to bridge the widening gap between people and technology. From hand-eye coordination to matching complex human systems to easier consumer products, this provides both a scientific and social assessment of modern technology.

With an open, friendly style, Vicente manages to explore the use - and misuse - of technology all around us, from our day-to-day life to critical systems like health care and nuclear plants. Vicente has a gift for weaving a web and linking elements from seemingly unrelated fields and linking them together in a thoroughly convincing manner. As he himself advocates here, the author has not written this book to assign blame for the current "bad fit" between technology-for-its-own-sake and people, but instead focuses on laying a groundwork towards a more balanced, manageable and safe design and application of technology.

This fascinating, engaging book is a must-read for anyone whose car has grown too complicated, whose VCR keeps blinking 12:00, or who feels that technology has got out of hand. It's probably not the best book for someone about to undergo a stay in hospital...

Ever since Charlie Chaplin parodied automation in Modern Times, we have known what happens when we ignore the human factor in technology, but we continue to produce dangerous and unusable devices.

Dr Vicente, a professor of human factors engineering, claims that we need to define technology in much broader terms than we usually do in order to avoid a "Cyclopean fixation on either mechanistic or humanistic world views." We need, in fact, to consider the entire legal, psychological, organizational and political environment in which technology is embedded. The author calls this approach Human-tech.

Consider that one of the reasons that hospitals continue to kill patients, even after badly designed equipment is identified, is that medical personnel dare not openly admit error, because of the severe career and legal consequences. This type of problem goes beyond traditional technical design issues of usability or ergonomics.

Ultimately, Dr Vicente is optimistic that we can and will resolve these problems. He offers the commercial airline industry as an example. In 2001, despite the horrendous murders on September 11th, the total number of major airline crashes was fewer than in any year since World War II. What the aviation industry did for commercial flights, we can do for our healthcare system, airport security, or anything we want to turn our hand to.

Human-tech is a phrase Vicente supposedly coined...however, it is a phrase found throughout the human factors profession and is even the name of a human factors company. This example is a metaphor for the entire book - a restatement of other people's ideas, much of which has been published in countless other domains - absolutely no new thinking here. The idea that systems should be designed from a legal, sociological, psychological, engineering, etc. approach has been in practice for some time and Vicente seems to ignore an entire field of research that has taken place in the science, technology, and society (STS) domain.

This was one of those books that is totally effortless to read. I attribute this to Kim Vicente's obvious passion for what he does, and his interesting ideas, research, and teaching, but most of all to his extraordinary ability to express himself.

I've read many similar books, like Normal Accidents, Human Error, and most of Donald A. Norman's books, and enjoyed them all, but this one was probably the most enjoyable. It's very logical and well-designed, and does a great job of clearly explaining past disasters like Chernobyl and TMI. I was especially enthralled, as well as appalled, by the description of the Walkerton Ontario public water disaster as an example of a system failure. This was the first I heard of that one.

His recommendations and predictions for the way forward are eminently sensible and practical. I especially liked the possibility of instituting anonymous incident reporting systems like the Aviation Safety Reporting System in medicine and industry.

But most of all I'm very glad that such an excellent thinker, author, and teacher is following up and developing the groundbreaking and critically important work of Jens Rasmussen.

What a wonderful experience! This books is both personal and critical. I was impressed with the author's range of knowledge and desire to bring new ideas to the reader. His range is wonderful!!

Ron Burnett's "How Images Think" is a major contribution to the current discussion surrounding images and the digital universe, and is essential reading for anyone interested in thinking about the implications of our relationship to analog and digital media. The book itself is gorgeously designed, with a luminous cover; each chapter is absorbing, and the reading experience is enhanced by the inclusion of additional sidebar comments/text, and interesting photographs. Most importantly, the text is full of intelligent and honest ideas about the contemporary process of interacting with images. It is academic and personal, complex and readable. The author's discussion of the internet as a "gateway" that transforms the computer from a device into a portal (ref. Chapter 6 "Humans--Machines"), is very astute, as are his thoughts on how current discussions of mind/consciousness often draw on metaphors used in computer science and engineering. A great book, overall, which I recommend to all.

The author's breadth really impressed... a handsome book, well-written, well-designed. The cover is unique. The book should be excellent for college level courses. I loved reading it.

The first chapter of this book examines a photograph taken by the
author. He use the photo to meditate on the Holocaust. It reminded
me of the work of Roland Barthes. Overall, a great book!

How Images Think never quite lives up to its clever title or Douglas Coupland's glowing endorsement on the back cover. Ron Burnett's wide-ranging interests, as evident in his excellent bibliography, too often distract from his focus on the way images work in today's computer mediated world.

Burnett is constantly skidding off on some new tangent, (entire chapters go off track) seemingly compelled to tell the reader everything he knows, even as it muddles the difficult argument he is trying to make about the locus of meaning and intelligence in an increasingly hybridized and mediated world, an argument that never becomes entirely clear.

How Images Think is admirable in its ambition and presents many welcome invitations to investigate the artists and thinkers who intrigue Burnett. In the end, I was reminded of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read in high school with the similar anticipation and finally disappointment in its lack of rigor.

This book is great because it gives step-by-step
explanations on various ways in programming RCX brain
and how to interface with various sensors.
A wonderful motivator for Mechatronics.
Dr. Chung, Lawrence Tech University

The book is exactly what it says in the preface: "(This) book presents a system-engineering methodology for the design, construction, and testing of robotic hardware, software, and mechanical interfacing".

The book is not for LEGO beginners but for advanced (electronics) users. There are some LEGO robot tips as well, and once you get used to engineering language (POC - proof of concept, BOM - Bill of Materials etc.) it is a nice book.

The book is more about circuit interfaces and related techniques so the experimentalist (you) needs much more than one LEGO set: for example "one salvaged RC transmitter-receiver pair" and scout, LEGO speed computer, Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab etc.

I really didn't like the cartoon type drawings of RCX brick, sensors and ... electrons.

I found the book easy for me to understand. Although I am relatively new to Mindstorms, I needed to be able to move beyond the basics. The programs provided on the cd gave me some more ideas of where I can go as I develop myself. It's light-hearted and full of illustrations that gave me a thorough understanding of the concepts that he discussed. This book is an asset to any collection.

As an experienced circuit designer and a lego mindstorms enthusiast, I found this book very disappointing. I had suspicions about why many copies of it were being auctioned on ebay for $2 each. Now I know why. Right from the first chapter on, I am puzzled about what the hell the author is attempting to communicate. I fail to understand why he uses an obsolete Scout programmable brick (from the Robotics Discovery Kit), or for that matter, why he even interfaces a gutted RC transceiver to it. He doesn't even use it to remotely control the robot. No, he uses the Scout interfaced with a relay driver circuit to turn a wireless receiver on and off remotely as a lame example of wireless control. This is an example of wireless control? Yeah, a bad one if anything.

I'm also not sure of the audience he intends this book for. He put lots of circuit schematics and descriptions in it, but assumes the reader has basic elctronics knowledge, such as diode and transistor theory, as well as circuit analysis skills. If this book was intended for high-school age readers, they better be taking electronics or have had courses in it, or he will lose them with this content. My personal opinion is that this text has some potential as a reference in the 2nd year of a community college electronics program, but no serious circuit designer, programmer, or even hobbyist is gonna get anything new from this. Better info about sensor development and other programming languages is easily found on other lego mindstorms websites.

Another annoying aspect is the author's liberal use of acronyms for just about any set of words he deems necessary, whether it fits or not. There are more TLAs throughout this text than any military field manual ever contained. I don't need him to condense something so useless as 'stand-alone code' to SAC for future use.

The author does include a new and interesting method of object-oriented RCX prgramming with Python and VBA language using Excel. This is probably about the only redeeming aspect of this text for savy programmers, but it too is more of a 'type this' and 'run this' treatment that omits any useful explaination of the code and how it works. I believe the intended audience for this book may just find this way over their head if they are only capable of programming the RCX using RCX code, instead of using other more flexible and challenging languages such as NQC and Java.

Bottom line: if you are even mildly curious about this book, get it at an auction or buy it used thru Amazon (as I did--I only paid $2.50 + $3.50 s/h). Don't even think about paying full retail price for this text; it isn't worth it, and you'll be disgusted that you wasted your money on it. Better and more information on RCX interfacing can be found on the web at other lego mindstorm sites such as http://www.plazaearth.com/usr/gasperi/lego.htm

I have in my collection all of the books published on Lego Mindstorms. While everyone else focus on construction of a Lego model with an accompanying program to add functionality to the model, Wilcher takes a different approach.

This book is not for the absolute beginners. You do need to have some prerequisites in electronics and programming. The book only shows you how to carry out the interfacing between the RCX and the outside world (using eg. RC transmitter/receivers, Basic Stamp) but assume you know about potentiometers, resistors etc and also know how to use multimeters. This book is more for the electronically adept users who wishes to use RCX as part of his tools.

Overall, this is book that I would highly recommend to all who wish to use the RCX other than what all the books have on about. I gave it 4 stars (actually I would have preferred 4.5 stars, but Amazon doesn't have that!) as I would really would see Wilcher going in-depth for some of the projects.

Not only does his book have a dazzling perspective into all the ways that the body is modified within modern practice he also brings it to a level that even the most novice of readers can grasp. Having been a philosophy student of Mr. Gray's in 1997 I must say it is not quite as enlightening as being in person with him, but it still shows his brilliance and true connection to the cyborg-mentality. Frankly if you can find a way to meet him, every second is worth it. But if you can't, this book is a good close second, and well worth your $ and reading time.

In Cyborg Citizen, the author argues that the creation of cyborgs calls for new definitions of citizenship. Examples can include Internet offerings and the legal and political issues raised by its use, and issues affecting the mechanization of humans with artificial parts. An intriguing survey of changing images of civil rights and liberties.

Why does it seem that all books written about human interaction with emerging technologies are written in postmodernist lingo? Gray's book is not nearly as objectionable in this regard as others (note, especially, the works of Pierre Levy, for truly awe-inspiring levels of incomprehensibiliy). At times he hits on topics that struck me as having a lot of merit (he takes the editors of WIRED to task, for instance, for promoting a sort of hipster-oh-man-this-is-so-awesome approach to technology, and he appropriately skewers libertarianism, etc.). However, I saw two main problems with the book: (1) The author appears to see everything and everybody in the world today as a cyborg of some sort - for example, ultrasound renders the fetus in the womb a cyborg, etc. The concept is so widely applied that it ceases to have meaning. (2) The regrettable lapses into postmodernist drivel, while thankfully infrequent are still discouraging. There is also a little (not a lot) of political correctness a la feminist theory to deal with. For instance, he spends some time skewering (no pun intended) the development of penile implants (cyborg penises!), and points out that the existence of such a phenomena validates the male-centric nature of technology so insightfully criticized by feminist theory. Odd, but no mention of breast implants is made. Purely an oversight, I'm sure!

There are so many serious topics to deal with in the area of our current and future relation to technology - when will someone write a coherent book addressing them?? While this book is an occasionally enjoyable read, in the end it can't be taken all that seriously.

I had a high level of interest upon picking up this book, as cyborg technology and the philosophy behind it, after reading it; however, I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I gave it a rating of 3 stars, but I think it deserves more along the lines of a 2.5. This book professes to be about cyborgs, and it is, but Gray's definition of "cyborg" is so incredibly broad that it loses a huge part of its relevancy. He defines a cyborg as "a self-regulating organism that combines the natural and artificial into one system," and takes that as far as it can possibly go, calling unborn fetuses cyborgs if they are viewed by ultrasound, and the average citizen a cyborg for having immunizations. I am a cyborg because I wear glasses.

One aspect of this book that struck me is that nearly everything Gray discusses seems to be along the lines of either common sense of common knowledge to the type of person who would be reading this book in the first place. It is useful as a reference material to springboard off of and steal a few quotes, or perhaps a simple overview of some of the politics of a technological society, but not much more.

By the end of this book, one is tired of the completely over-used word "cyborg"; as it seems to apply to nearly everything and everyone in today's society; as well as Gray's frequent references to the late Christopher Reeves. Like so many movies today, this book is worth a borrow, but I wouldn't plop down my hard earned money for it. If you are looking for in-depth research surrounding the technolgy of cyborgs, look elsewhere.

Written in the personal, post-modern style, down to earth, and occasionally profound, Cyborg Citizen is an instructive meditation on the interpenetration of the machine and the human, the machine and the non-human, the human and the non-human. Hables Gray reviews most of the relevant academic literature (Haraway and others) draws examples of cyborg lifestyles from the news (Christopher Reeves and others), from pop culture (TV, Sci-Fi, comic books) to make his larger point that the signs of cyborgization are everywhere now, and that we are all cyborgs now, whether we know it or not. Though penetrated by technoscience, most of us are not aware of the extent to which we have become drafted in the great cyborg experiment. Hables Gray argues we need to find new ways of thinking about the intersection of science, technology, and living things in order to make better (or at least some!) choices about where the technoscience juggernaut is taking us.

He explores a variety of different areas where political thinking has either been ineffective or brushed aside by the exigencies of technoscience and capitalism: Frankenfoods, franken-species, cloning, in-vitro fertilization practices are all covered, as are transgendering and cyborgization in pursuit of sexual fulfillment. He does equal justice to all the complexities these collisions entail. That's why I didn't give the book the full 5 stars, actually, because not all these topics deserve examination at the same length. But that's a minor complaint, of course.

After reading Cyborg Citizen you will find examples of cyborgs everywhere. Of course, as tool users and builders and putterers, we've always been cyborgs -- as much shaped by our tools as the things we've shaped with them -- but the recognition of this fact and how it plays out across the realms of the civic, the economic, the scientific and technological as described in Cyborg Citizen will show the reader how far we are from Rousseau's state of nature -- if indeed there ever was such a place -- but that we may not have much further to go before the tools and cyborgs we build remake the world into place where we would not choose to live, indeed, a world where we may not be able to live. Not anti-techoscience, but rather, pro-thoughtful technoscience, Gray lays out the conundrums simply and argues that to be only pro or anti-techoscience is a luxury we cannot afford. Ultimately, he argues that as cyborgs we have to start thinking about what that really means.

Nutshell review - A very useful reference and overview of the world of Information Visualization. A huge number of articles and topics covering a large number of areas providing ideas, insights, and thought provoking for anyone interested in representing / visualizing data.

This book enters our sensibilites.

We must learn to challenge our vulnerability toward icons. In order to take our place in the upcoming era, we must recognize how many burdens we have carried because we have reacted to iconography --a phenomena far deeper than mere affection toward slogans and images. A healthy human intelligence is adaptive not reactive. We must recognize the terrible demand upon us to develop a serious forethought.

The approach and language of this book stimulates our desire to develop appropriate tools and poo-poos the fashions of populism --a phenomena at its worst in current computing circles!

We're being drawn into using the computer for JUNK. This book asks us to grow up. Great idea!

If I would have been able to buy what basically amounts to a near comprehensive gathering of exactly the kind of research I've spent the past three years trying to find....I'd be a happer man with far more hair on my head.

Caveat: you gotta be the kind of person who likes reading this sort of thing. I love reading RFC's so its way up my alley. If you are looking for a Reader's Digest version of how to develop interfaces for complex systems you won't find it here.

But if you are one who seeks to augment your own personal toolbox with the findings of those far more wise than yourself, get out your wallet and buy this book. Its great.

Stuart Card, Jock Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman, all extraordinary leaders in creating and researching the field on human-computer interface design, have pooled their editorial judgment to create a comprehensive, and much-needed collection of pioneering articles on information visualization. They have produced remarkable survey of such topics as context, mapping, spatial metaphors, interaction, navigation, and visual tools.

680 pages! 47 articles! Filled with excellent choices of research and invention woven together with incisive summaries of the widely disparate, individual software accomplishments of the leaders of the field from around the world. This indispensable collection not only provides in-depth solutions to specific problems but also shows the explorer where the current frontiers are.

A rich, solid, impressive, and welcome contribution to a field that affects all of our lives now that the interactive graphic computer has made all of us users of visual language. Altogether indispensable for the researcher and innovator who will return to this remarkable collection again and again.

--Robert E. Horn, author, "Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century" and visiting scholar, Program on People, Computers and Design, The Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.

hey somebody ripped me off!

yes the written content is full of great information, and is highly acclaimed. However the vast majority of the images used in this book are nearly unreadable due to the extremely poor reproduction quality and low image resolution. This leads me to wonder whether the book was printed at kinkos or printed from the high school's 150 dpi printer!

i've seen photocopies that looked better than this! i'm not kidding!

come on.. black text on dark grey background?

were these conscious design decisions?

note... the 1 star is to bring down the average. i bought the book due to the perfect record of all 5 stars, however i don't believe a book on design topics should get away with such horrid imagery for the price..

2 of the 3 authors for this book are from xerox... i wouldn't doubt they used thier own xerox machine to reproduce the graphic designs found within the pages inside the cover.

This book is extremely well done, and it can be applied to much more than writing. I think that the bulk of it applies to almost any kind of design, i.e getting to know the users, their needs, abilities, experience, etc. and then involving them in the design, getting feedback, establishing a partnership, etc. It's just the kind of up from the trenches stuff that managers would be wise to listen to but very rarely do. You can definitely sense the frustration the author has in technical writers being the band-aid applied to poor product design and cost-cutting, and she offers concrete alternatives when you have limitations.

I also love the recursiveness of it, in that she is writing the same thing she is also describing, so talk about reading between the lines! I could read it over and over, each time appreciating more and more how she followed her own advice.

This book is what I always look for in a book, because it starts from the beginning and ends at the end, with a clear trail of how it got there. The supporting introduction, glossary, index, notes and references are very well done.

Coe does a great job of introducing the reader to the writer. There are so many things that we as writers don't think about, or take for granted when we write. This book really opened my eyes not only as a writer but also as a reader to the importance of understanding how people read, understand, learn, and absorb information.

I cannot tell you how many times, as a techwriter, and content developer, if you work on other people's stuff, edit the engineer's stuff...they think you are "Dumbing-it-down" or castrating it.

They make like they are working on the Next NOBEL PRIZE, and you dare touch their stuff!! How-dare-you! How could a lowly writer understand the full glory of their verbiage?
And the more obscure, passive and inpenetrable it is, the more it makes them look "more better smarter-est", the ole highschool "Baffle them with BS" ploy. If it's in pure ASCII text, even better! See, they are catering to the purest of Intelligencia...

So basically, the writer gets treated like a transcriptionist, or formatter, and god help you if you try to do your job.
And then the schmucks have the nerve to keep asking you back to help them, but keep undermining you.

Then they wonder why nobody likes to use their application. Hmmmmm! I wonder!

If you do any kind of writing for your job buy this book and read it cover to cover. With that said my review follows:

There are so many positives in this book that I will list the negatives first, there are few and very minor at that.

The cover has got to go. It does not represent the depth and wealth of the information inside. To be honest, it looked so poorly thought out and old, I felt the contents of the book must be too. Thankfully, I dropped my bias and was very pleasantly surprized.

The other negative may be my own personal preference, but I like the footnote detail at the bottom of the page, so when I see it I don't have to scoot to the end of the chapter to see what it is. This is how good the book was, I read all the footnotes and references too.

Marlana Coe has created a book that I hope not only do Technical writers from all over read, but Human Factors professionals too. As a fanatic-pursuer of documentation meeting its goal to communicate, this book says it all. The usability measurement on documentation is whether or not it allows the author to communicate to the reader and Marlana Coe shows you just how to do that. In fact, she shows you while doing that herself.

I bought this book because as a Human Factors professional, I find we do not practice what we preach. We review a product and come up with wonderful ideas to make it better and then proceed to hide that in a document that is not geared for the reader. Many technical reports, even the ones that only have a small group of customers, don't meet those customers needs. There are no pictures, tables and diagrams and worst of all no logical organization for the reader to create a structure around the information. The documents are geared for the writer to regurgitate data, not for the reader to absorb it. Granted this is not all, but too much of a majority in a group of people that should know better. Most human factors professional know, how to increase usability of everyone else's product but their own: the technical report they create on products they review. This book bridges that gap, for HF professionals especially. Yes, I'm including myself in this category (I did buy the book after all).

For all the rest of you, this gives you reasons for all the practices that good technical writers should use. From the amount of white space to use to the number of fonts and colors. There are also suggestions on organization and on construction of these documents. One section discussed content and the importance of context of usage. This is something, I never really thought of that much. (Oops).

Another thing the author has done was fashion a book on a technical subject and made it readable. This is something she also covers in her book. Her language is natural and she has not fallen into the trap of using technical words or ones that may escape the average readers vocabulary.

In a word: Fantastic!

Well, I just got this book. From the Preface: "This book is not a "how-to". This book is one level higher and deals with the cognitive psychological theory of designing and developing technical communication...". Thats not what I need. I looked for "how to' not for another academic book. Well this book is going to the return center.