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Title: The Art of Interactive Design: A Euphonious and Illuminating Guide to Building Successful Software by Chris Crawford ISBN: 1-886411-84-0 Publisher: No Starch Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Verbose
Comment: An amusing book. Perhaps Crawford's most striking suggestion is that a project should be headed by a designer who has an arts background and who is also able to program. To him, this is an ideal, which may take the field decades to achieve.
I am dubious as to how necessary this is, in the first place. He claims that it is easier to find someone from the arts and have her learn the rudiments of programming, than vice versa. But in a specialised environment, like engineering, science or education, it may be better for her to hail from that field, so that she can better know what users might want. Granted, though, for a mass market audience, a more general background might be better.
When it comes to specific suggestions regarding the design of a program, he has good ideas. Like using progress bars if a task takes longer than ten seconds. Or using first or second person active voice, rather than a third person passive. These do increase the interactivity.
The book is somewhat verbose. He writes at length to illustrate his points. But a little brevity may have been possible, without losing any clarity.
Rating: 2
Summary: Whole book, three words: interactivity over features
Comment: This book definitely has a drum to beat, and it's around the value of interactivity over just pure featuritis. However, it goes on and on, littered with what feel like pseudo-scientific statements. It would've been nice to see a few studies of real people, research citations, or even just opinions of somebody other than the author. It felt like he was rewriting the evolution of software over time from his own frame of reference, and then extrapolating about where he thought it was going.
Still, there was at least one point I agreed with; interactivity (and, in general, providing value to the user) is more important than additional hanger-on features.
Rating: 2
Summary: Too full of fluff
Comment: If you're looking for a book with over-abstracted filler written by an author with ulterior agendas and a need to use his thesaurus and high school history books to prove his intellectual capacity, this is the book for you. If you're looking for a book that can be more readily applied to interactive design, look elsewhere.
Granted, a few of the chapters provide insight into smart design principles and distilling down what is essential to pleasing the end users, but books comprised of a few chapters don't sell very well in today's market of thicker-is-better tech books. Another annoying deception is the copyright date which shows 2003, yet the book is chock full of obviously outdated references such as the lack of web users with broadband and being able to watch full-motion video on your home computer "in the near future".
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Title: Chris Crawford on Game Design by Chris Crawford ISBN: 0131460994 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 18 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design by Andrew Rollings, Ernest Adams ISBN: 1592730019 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 05 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
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Title: Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative by Mark S. Meadows ISBN: 0735711712 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 10 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee ISBN: 1403961697 Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Pub. Date: 16 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman ISBN: 0465067107 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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