Recommended Reading

For those who are interested more on developing an interface design. A book that I highly recommended to you guys! These book ought to be complementary as tells you about design and visually communicating your message.

Mullet, K. & Sano, D. 1995, Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques, Sunsoft Press, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
This book is divided into 8 chapters. The first is an introduction to tell us that "Visual Design attempts to solve communication problems in a way that is at once functionally effective and aesthetically pleasing.", the last is the conclusion which gives us the profound observation that visual design is happening to your software every day and if it is not good design, then it must be bad design! The 6 chapters in between follow a clearly defined pattern. They first explain the problem, then deliver the background (usually from cognitive psychology), present the principles involved, followed by a series of examples demonstrating common errors, then we are presented with the techniques (from the title) which can be used to solve the problem and adhere to the principles. These techniques are explained in clear, concise and logical detail with examples. Each technique is summarised into bullet points.
Throughout, this book is beautifully illustrated with examples ranging from industrial design, graphic design, ui design and brand marketing. The authors/publishers must have spent a long time selecting the imagery to be used and obtaining all the necessary permissions to re-produce the material. In this respect alone, the book is a triumph as a general book on design.
Overall we are told that "When designing for human-computer interaction, communication is the over-riding concern." So here is a book about communicating your information, message or data through the computer screen.