Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design

by Jenifer Tidwell

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)

Genres: Design, Programming, Nonfiction, Reference, Technology, Computer Science, Website Design

578 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

Reviews

[Mikal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Designing Interfaces is one of the few books every designer should have and read, note: get the print version, this book will not translate well to ebook.

It does a great job laying out the common patterns of software design and establishing a common nomenclature for referring to each one. Given its scope, Tidwell only superficially tackles each topic-- however she provides the foundational elements of each one (going over Gestalt principles for example) to ensure even those unfamiliar to interaction design are up to speed.

While I rate this five stars for effectively reaching its goals; I am disappointed that Tidwell did not pair with a researcher to cite usability and user research studies that speak to how each interaction performs in the wild. Additionally the social interfaces' focus on creating social content vs. creating social interfaces was oddly placed within the context of this book.

I can imagine Designing Interfaces becoming my 'get unstuck' tool in my toolkit; sadly since it does not cover the peer-reviewed cons of many of the patterns, it doesn't serve as a "designers desk reference".

But at over 500 pages, I get that some things were simply out of scope.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another gorgeous design book. But not quite what I was expected.

The book is basically an encyclopedia of UI design patterns, or maybe "mini patterns". Broken into categories like form design, editor design, etc. Covering areas like individual, concrete patterns like tabbed containers, referred to as "card stack" to general, abstract notions like "diagonal balance". Each pattern is cross-linked with related patterns. I assume an online version of this book would work quite well, particularly if the graphic layout there is as good as it is the the book (I'd have to guess it's not).

So, sadly, not a whole lot of new information for me, but it was certainly interesting to page through here. I also suspect the next time I actually do some UI design (been awhile), I may pull this out and read the sections on UI bits that I actually use, to get some additional thoughts.

A bunch of the patterns are actually available on the web, here:

http://designinginterfaces.com/

[Abhinav · Rating 4 out of 5]

The domain of the book is very well defined by its title. Its primary focus is to educating the readers about Interaction Patterns, its use and context of usage. The book encompasses certain aspects of Interfaces but leaves the readers craving for more patterns. So after reading this book you might want to look into Yahoo! pattern library.
All in all, a nice read for someone who has a decent knowledge of Interface designing and interface usability. Will not recommend this book to someone looking for an introduction to this field. Should try Steve Krug or Donald Norman books first. A must for someone looking to excel in Interaction design field.

[Alper Çuğun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice book with explanations and examples of most of the common user interface elements and idioms. An excellent reference with thoughtful and in most cases very recent examples illustrating the patterns.

As with any design book this is not complete but covers most of the bases extensively and a lot in it has been motivated thoroughly but remains discutable. Let neither of those put you off.

[Paz · Rating 3 out of 5]

El mundo del UX esta lleno de conceptos que ya están definidos. Este libro es como la enciclopedia de esos conceptos. Súper útil. Sobre todo si estas arrancando en el mundo del diseño de experiencias de usuarios.

[Martti · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book for designers to think about "common sense" that might not be as commonly distributed as the name would suggest. For me it was just a fun little dip into an area where I don't go swimming, almost never. On the other hand, after parsing through the patterns, it makes you appreciate correct usage a tiny bit more, I feel.

First edition of this book was written 2005 and the second one after the smartphone revolution 2011, but main parts are so called "common sense" in any situation. But if possible, then you should probably take a look at 2020 third edition. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/...

Now some examples of patterns discussed. The first 14 are more like essays of how to think about your users and how to be more helpful.

Safe Exploration - "let me explore without getting lost or getting into trouble"

Instant Gratification - people want to get the success experience quickly. Let them do simple things simply.

Satisficing - "good enough", satisfying and sufficing. Help with tutorial pointers to get started like "type here", "drag image", "now save". Make labels short, plainly worded, quick to read.

Changes Midstream - "I changed my mind about what I was doing." Or I was interrupted and shut my laptop, but I want to continue afterwards from the same place.

Deferred Choices - "I don't want to answer that now; just let me finish!" Like a long registration form if you just wanted to post a little link or buy this one thing in the e-shop.

Incremental Construction - user does a little change, saves/compiles/builds and does a bit of a change again. Flow would be interrupted by a long lag or wait.

Habituation - "The gesture works everywhere else; why doesn't it work here, too?" Or why does it work different? Like Ctrl-A Ctrl-X Ctrl-S in Emacs sends the cursor to the beginning of the line and save the file, but in Word it selects all, cuts it and then saves the document.

Microbreaks - "I'm waiting for the train; let me do something useful for two minutes". If the user needs to "triage" items, make it efficient to star, save, select. Long load times are a sure way for the user to give up on your app. This pattern is mostly for the smartphone.

Spatial Memory - "I swear that button was here a minute ago." People remember more easily where the documents are, not what they're named. Or if you have lots of OK/Cancel dialogs, then let them be in a similar place with similar labels doing the same thing.

Prospective Memory - Email client let's you name folders, code editor let's you type whatever without restrictions. Write yourself a calender memo or TODO. Also next time document is opened, continue from the spot you left. Or if the user leaves unfinished tasks open, or browser tabs - deal with it.

Steamlined Repetition - "I have to repeat this how many times?" Have a "replace all" or a possibility to set a default answer to a repetitive question. Or support scripting (make a shell script to do that).

Keyboard Only - "please don't make me use the mouse"

Other People's Advice - Stack Overflow, Reddit, user comments / reviews in Amazon about the product, IMDB about the movie, BGG about the game, etc.

Personal Recommendation - like the last pattern, but support direct sharing, permalinks.


Usually you cannot just show a single thing, but a list. This is what most of the world's digital artifacts seem to do. Lists present rich challanges - how long is the list? Is it flat or hierarchical? What kind of an hierarchy? How is it ordered, and can the user change that? Shoult it be filtered or searched? What operations associate with each item?

Feature, Search, and Browse - a common pattern for search engines, shops, but also just a blog or a news site.

News Stream pattern - blogs, news list the newest item on top and descend through time.

Dashboard - information dense overview.

Wizard - step by step tutorial pattern

Picture Manager - timeline, maybe grouped by day, hour. Might use "Thumbnail Grid" and/or "Pagination" pattern. Maybe a "Two-Panel Selector" for moving pictures into different sets.

Provide Tools to Create a Thing - "Canvas Plus Palette" for visual editors, "Many Workspaces" to work with many documents in parallel or web pages in tabs, "Alternative Views" to view the object through different "lenses".

The rest of the chapter is
3 goes into navigation.
4 is about layout of page elements.
5 on how to display lists.
6 is devoted to the "verbs" in the interface, the actions and commands.
7 shows complex data.
8 wants to get the user input in forms and controls.
9 is an addition to the 2nd ed - using Social Media, which went mainstream around 2009 with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube.
10 on Going Mobile, also an addition to the 2nd ed, because 2007 iPhone happened. Today you would probably read Android Material Design.
11 on Visual Design.

A little side note - it's fun to see the 2011 screenshots from the internet of the day. Discontinued product like Google Reader. Or just fun old designs of Google, Firefox, Amazon, etc. Also seems Google Buzz was big at a time of writing the 2nd ed. And Del.icio.us - damn it, it was very useful!

[Graham Herrli · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can only assume that one of the reasons some people don't believe in the value of UX design is the existence of books like this.

In over 500 pages it says absolutely nothing.

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a software engineer with 10+ years of experience, trying to deepen my understanding of UX/UI and the "design" side of my industry.

This book is a big catalogue of all the different types of UI elements you might use in your application - autocomplete text inputs, modal panels, rounded corners and much more - with an explanation of what each element achieves, when you might want to use it, and what its advantages and disadvantages are. Despite being published in 2005, it doesn't feel very out of date, as pretty much all these design elements are timeless and still widely used in applications today. It's comprehensive - but it's also completely pointless. If you've ever used a computer for more than a couple of hours, you're already familiar with all the design elements that this book purports to teach you about, and the "explanations" mostly just state the obvious.

I suppose there might theoretically be some value in organising all the hundreds of common UI design patterns into a catalogue like this, but then I'm not sure who the target audience is. Maybe you might learn something new from Designing Interfaces if you're at the very beginning of your career and know nothing about software whatsoever, but personally I'm not sure that I learned a single thing from this book that I hadn't already figured out by myself.

Verdict: don't bother.

[Rafaila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the book was written back in 2005, it mostly discusses basic principles of UI design that are timeless, avoiding to get in details that are related with the seasonal trends. This approach makes the book modern even after 12 years.

The writer managed to present and analyse most aspects that someone needs to consider in order to create a user-friendly UI, while most of the analysed principles can be also applied for web-design or even poster-design. It is easy-to-read and written in a simple language without too much terminology that could make it unfriendly for less technical readers. I also liked the fact that it presents example screenshots of UIs, which -although they can now be considered quite old-fashioned- they help make the presented points more easily comprehensible.

Of course, the fact that it was written 12 years ago is something that the reader needs to keep in mind while reading it, and - in my opinion - needs to be combined with more recent sources in order to give a complete picture of UIs' needs nowadays.

[Nika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was super useful when I was working on my project. When I did not have much ideas how to start with creating a certain element I could always find ideas. What I really like about this book is also how much material you can find. Today we have websites such as Material Design and many others who share the component specifications with the rest of the world. So even though I think it's a good book, it's not as practical as a direct website and some of it's cases are pretty old - but it covers a lot more cases than some websites with those specs.
It is also made more for designing websites, and just a small amount of the book (few pages in the end) are reserved for designing interfaces on mobile. Nevertheless I'm pretty sure I will use this book throughout this and other projects.

[Dhuaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review for 2020 edition)

Very nice encyclopedia/showcase of common design patterns. Each pattern is explained - what it does, what are users' expectations, what are its states and capabilities, and where you should use it. It is, perhaps, not what many readers are looking for, but I find this kind of book useful for:
- teaching interface designers about states (empty, selected, error etc)
- giving developers a glimpse of the meaning behind the interface and human factors in web dev, not just dry code
- making people think about the web product as a whole, not just a haphazard pile of mockups and merge requests
- enforcing common language between the teams - so that people won't say "dropdown menu" and mean "html select"

It's a nice book to have in print version, so that one can flip through it during downtime and hopefully learn something new, or see something in a new light.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this as a supplemental resource for a new job, particularly for Chapter 7, and think it’s an excellent guide. It doesn’t go very in depth, but she lists pros and cons of different design decisions that helps, IMO, when making UI decisions. I think this is a great reference for anyone in a HCD field, especially those who are new to UI design. I don’t think it’s the best resource for people who have been working in the field for a while though, and much better for novices like myself. Excellent resource for anyone starting in the field. (Do yourself a favor and get the hard copy, not the e-book. Personal preference perhaps, but that’s my 2 cents)

[Thanh Nhàn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Với dân UI/UX thi Designing Interfaces đã được xếp vào hàng ‘kinh thánh’.

Với lối viết truyền cảm hứng cộng với hơn 500 trang kiến thức chuyên sâu và các minh họa sinh động, 3 tác giả Jenifer Tidwell, Charles Brewer và Aynne Valencia đã tạo nên một cẩm nang thiết kế mà bất kỳ ai cũng phải say mê. Dù bạn là designer tay ngang hay chuyên gia lão luyện, Designing Interfaces cũng sẽ khiến bạn phải trầm trồ với những bí quyết vàng, lời khuyên sâu sắc về cách tạo nên những sản phẩm có UI/UX hoàn hảo.

Ở Việt Nam, BOOKEE bán cuốn này giá khá là tốt, bạn tham khảo ở đây nhé: https://bookee.store/designing-interf...

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Designing interfaces can be very difficult. The proof is the majority of applications that are hard or unpleasant to work with. Yet the author has no idea what designing interfaces takes. Tidwell only wings it by making up reasons why the Apple interface is great. Well the Apple interface is great and sales would prove it. And? Reading this book you would be able to do a Mac application interface. Something you would be able to do by simply using a Mac and paying attention to the details, instead of wasting time and money on some improvisation skills.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although written in 2011, this is still a valuable resource for talking about and designing applications of all types (desktop, web, mobile). Trends come & go (as evidenced by the numerous examples) but the building blocks remain the same. A great reference!

My only quibble is with the book design. There are so many examples (a good thing) it's hard to pick the major heading out sometimes (a bad thing). If there was more whitespace and maybe a more striking section level style for each pattern it would be infinitely more readable and usable.

[Stefan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice overview of UI patterns (typical ways interface is out together, controls you would use etc) with some coverage of usability and interactions. Definitely worth giving an user / client so they know what's possible / feasible whilst working on a new app / website. Since 2nd edition Google Material design and iOS 'Human Interface Guidelines' moved the domain a bit. Time for a reviewed 3rd edition?

[Summa Smiff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview of common UI elements and their best use cases. If you have been an interaction designer for long, most of it is likely to be familiar if not obvious, but the clear explanations still make this a valuable read. If you are new to interaction design, Designing Interfaces will get you to start thinking about the relationship of form to function and put you on the right path for further development.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book highlights classic design patterns in desktop user interfaces and is helpful broken down into specific topic areas. It’s a good resource but one that I feel should be updated to reflect changes that have happened to interfaces since it was originally written. I was torn between giving it 3 or 4 stars as some of the illustrations and examples are a bit dated, but I ended up giving it 4 because the explanations were very clear and helpful as a resource.

[Camilo Metaute · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recomendado, es un libro muy denso, pero explica muy bien los patrones y el porque de cada elemento, los diseños son viejitos y eso me desanimaba a ratos pero vale la pena leerlo y entender dónde están los recursos para el algún momento recurrir a esos patrones que presenta el libro, para entender el nombre de componentes también me pareció muy útil.

[Nguyen Huu Anh Vu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains many mini UI patterns, from UX point of view. Each with its own what, why, when, how and examples from well-known Desktop Application, Website, Mobile...

This serves as a good reference book, not as a thorough guide for Designing Interfaces

[Mike Guzowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bardzo dobra książka poruszająca kompleksowo zagadnienia związane z UI i UX. Nie porusza jednak nowych trendów design tylko skupia się na podstawach. Przez to część porad może być przestarzała niemniej głównie poruszane są zasady ponadczasowe i niezbędne do zbudowania fundamentów.

[Ania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book with basic knowledge about designing interfaces. Must read if one is interested in ui/ux design. One big minus – unfortunately it’s a bit outdated. It definitely should be updated with new design patterns.

[Kristen Byers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite textbook but not the worst, either. Lots of UX design patterns with clear examples (that will surely be outdated in two years). I also did not like the use of the term “differently abled”.

[Francesco · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of great stuff in here on Information Architecture but the examples are very old.

The book needs an update to be really worth the read at this point.

F //

[Ieva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goog, though should be updated. Some examples are outdated.

[✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great reference even though the examples were dated and the writing was a little dense.

[Ahmed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good reference for beginners. Gestalt's principles summary (chapter 4) was the best part.

[Ivan Koma · Rating 3 out of 5]

(HR) Слишком много паттернов, решил ввести еще один DPE (Don't Patternize everything), а в целом большая часть книги это понятные для любого человека вещи, собранные в единый текст

[Yokusun Basi]

Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell (2005)

[Zobia Khalid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like it