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Book Review: Designing from Both Sides of the Screen

by John S. Rhodes 

Quick Review

Introduction

I just read Designing from Both Sides of the Screen: How Designers and Engineers Can Collaborate to Build Cooperative Technology (Amazon link) by Ellen Isaacs and Alan Walendowski. Isaacs is a technology design leader at AT&T Labs and has expertise in usability. Walendowski is a software engineer at AT&T Labs and has expertise in programming and software development. 

This is a book that describes the principles and process of user interface design. It is broken up into two parts. The first part (The Goal) consumes about 25% of the pages; it includes chapters 1-4. The second part (The Process) consumes about 70% of the pages; it includes chapters 5-11. The last 5% of the book is Appendixes (Guidelines and Recommended Readings). 

In this review, I'll explain why I did not like the book but I will pull out some of the more useful information. Who knows, based on what I write, you might decide that you need it. Yet, the way I see it, with limited time and money, it does not make sense to buy this book since  other books provide much more value.

The First 89 Pages (Part One Overview)

The first part of the book introduces the idea of usability. More importantly, the authors provide several examples of usability problems. The problems range from a Xerox copy machine interface to Pacific Bell's customer service center to AOL's instant messenger. Isaacs and Walendowski balance things out with several good examples too. For example, they talk about how some Corvette key remotes automatically lock and unlock the car doors when you get close to the car. You don't even have to push a button on the remote yet the doors still lock and unlock for you. They also talk about how several software applications, such as Quicken, perform type-ahead (i.e., as you type, previously used words that match what you are starting to type automatically fill the box).

The first part 89 pages of the book are generally useful. The authors provide good examples; the color pictures are useful and tasteful. They also point out several useful guidelines in the context of the real world. For designers and developers unfamiliar with usability and user-centered design, the first part of the book might be useful. 

The Rest of the Book 

On page 90, the book suddenly takes a radical turn. I was literally jolted upright. Instead of diving into more usability issues, the book transforms into a book about Hubbub. Hubbub is an instant messenger that runs on wireless Palms and Windows PCs. Isaacs and Walendowski, with a little bit of help, actually built Hubbub at AT&T. It is an ongoing research project into instant messengers and related collaborative technologies. If you are interested in the project, you can visit the Hubbub web site.

The rest of the book is devoted to explaining how Isaacs and Walendowski applied usability and user-centered design to Hubbub. They explain why they generated task lists and how those lists relate to developing functional requirements. They discuss the development of user interface specifications, system architecture, and iterative development. They also devote some pages on how to run usability tests. 

The first appendix is literally a list of general guidelines. The second appendix is a list of recommended readings. The book concludes with a healthy index. It was one of the best parts of the book; well organized and proper level of detail (indexes are too often neglected, in my opinion).

Problems!

Based on what I wrote above, you might think that I liked the book. While it is true that I liked the first part of the book, it is not as good as other books that cover the same kind of material. For example, if you really want to learn about usability problems in the real world, you should read The Design of Everyday Things (Amazon link) by Don Norman. It is still probably the best book to get you thinking about all the various types of the usability problems in the world. There is also the Interface Hall of Shame, which is a good collection of interface design problems. So, although the first part of Designing from Both Sides of the Screen is not too bad, there are equal or better resources available.

The second part of the book simply doesn't make sense to me. I understand that the authors wanted to use a "real" example by using Hubbub. That is, they wanted to provide people with a concrete and detailed review of how they built usability into the Hubbub tool. I admire the effort but it falls flat. It seems too academic and at other times much too simplistic. While Hubbub might be easier to use than AOL IM or ICQ, it doesn't really have to compete against them since it is subsidized by AT&T. Stated another way, I never heard of Hubbub before I read this book. 

If Hubbub is so easy to use and if it is a model of instant messenger usability, why hasn't it gained any market share? That might not be the point of the book, and perhaps I am being a bit harsh, but idealized usability is no better than just whipping up a software product and releasing it without any usability. I haven't downloaded and used Hubbub, but I don't feel that I should. I don't need it and I don't think I will learn much about usability by using it. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the world needs another instant messenger.

Designing from Both Sides of the Screen would have been a good book about instant messenger usability. The authors tried to treat the book like it was about the process of usability. They tried to treat Hubbub as an example. What a shame. It fell flat for me in large part because I thought Hubbub was a really boring product. Another instant messenger, and built in a pseudo-academic environment (AT&T Labs) -- yawn.

The book could have been much, much better if it was only about instant messenger usability. That would have been the perfect niche to fill. Instead, the authors get so caught up in Hubbub itself that they lose the bigger picture of instant messenger usability, for all instant messenger products. That is definitely a hot area of investigation, especially when you start thinking about how Microsoft plans on using its IM platform as part of their overall web services infrastructure (read more...). The instant messenger usability niche would be perfect because it has not been properly addressed yet. Too bad, it is a missed opportunity! 

If you are interested in the process of usability and usability engineering, you should problem just pick up a copy of Usability Engineering (Amazon link) by Jakob Nielsen. Or, if you want something a bit less dry, perhaps you should read Alan Cooper's The Inmates Are Running the Asylum (Amazon link). Cooper's book is a lot like Don Norman's in that it gets you really thinking about usability and why it is important. If you are interested in how to actually do usability (i.e., perform usability tests), you should read Jeffrey Rubin's Handbook of Usability Testing (Amazon link) or User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (Amazon link) by Hackos and Redish. I could go on and on with recommendations for other books you should read, but I think I have made my point. 

Conclusion

Designing from Both Sides of the Screen doesn't do a great job introducing usability and it doesn't do a great job explaining usability testing. Also, it is too focused on Hubbub to the exclusion of reviewing other instant messengers. As I stated above, I would have loved almost any book that talked about instant messenger usability in general. 

While there are several useful books about web usability, there are currently no good books on the usability of instant messengers and email programs. While web usability has been given proper treatment, other areas have been neglected. Indeed, I challenge you to find good information on the topic of instant messenger usability! The authors are so in love with Hubbub that they neglect other instant messengers. It would have been awesome to see a full-blown comparison of AOL IM, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, and Hubbub. Imagine looking at the usability of these various products. That would have been wonderful! For all we know, the usability engineering process is a failure because the authors only describe and measure the usability of Hubbub. Argh! 

Save your money. Don't buy this book.

Important Note: If you are interested in learning more, I recommend that you visit UI Designs, which is the companion web site for this book. 

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