Designing the Moment

Author: Robert Hoekman Jr.
Publisher: New Riders
Published: 2008
Pages: 236

This book’s objective is to educate on the subject of building useful user interfaces – or rather, useful user experiences. There is a difference, as a user interface may be pretty, but might not provide the best user experience. The reverse can also be true. But there is no reason that you can’t have both.

Throughout the book, Robert shares lessons learned from real-world situations. They cover common design elements seen on the web, generally starting with a less-than-optimal design, and finishing with an improved version.

Such experiences include login forms, web forms in general, shopping carts, site navigation, page layouts, and other user interaction scenarios on the web.

Not every situation will have a solution in the book; rather, the book is intended as a sort of "conversation starter", or to make you think about ways to improve the way you design a user interface or interaction. Robert even says so in the introduction. In that regard, I think the book succeeds.

The book is slim, deceptively so, but it holds a wealth of lessons on building enjoyable user experiences. There are 31 chapters, but each one is fairly bite-sized. Most chapters are five pages or less, and there are some that go a bit longer, but not many. This makes the book easy reading.

The book was a quick read. Too quick, I think. When I reached the end, I thought, "it’s over already?" The book is great, but given the subject material, more scenarios would have been appreciated.

Another criticism is that the book does not break new ground. The subject material has been fairly extensively covered in other books and online. Admittedly, I enjoyed the way this book was written, with the author’s casual narrative and use of real-world situations.

The bottom line: this book is not what I would call a must-read, although it is a good read all the same. It does provide useful information and starts you thinking on how to create better designs.