Designing the Obvious
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This second edition of Designing the Obvious explains why and how to design applications that are so easy to use that people attribute their ability to use them effectively to pure common sense. We need to: Make decisions based not on whim, but on strategy Build only what's absolutely necessary Quickly turn beginning users into intermediates Prevent errors when possible and gracefully handle those we cannot prevent Reduce and refine task flows to make the complex clear Design not for users, but for their situations Be persuasive by helping users make decisions that align with their needs Ignore the demands of users and stick to a vision (gasp!)
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This book contains a collection of practical tips to improve the design of your user interface. It does not contain much information on the underlying design principles, or on how to test your design. That's not the focus of this book.
It is divided into clear chapters. Each chapter can be seen as a design principle, if you will. In each chapter, Hoekman provides numerous practical tips. These tips, unfortunately, are lost in the amount of text surrounding them. I could read the largest part of this book by just scanning the pages, which is not how I usually read books. The tips themselves are definitely useful.
I think this book is a good starting point if you have experience developing applications and you want to start learning about user interface design. The practical tips can be used the next working day. If you then want to gain deeper insights and learn more, you can pick up another book.