Annotated Theory and Practice in Design List

1 About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design Cooper, Alan New York: IDG Books Worldwide, 1995 The first thirteen chapters address global issues: programmers' versus users' mental models of program operation and file systems. The middle chapters deal with technical aspects of application "affordances"- buttons, menus, cursors, dialog boxes and so on. The last seven chapters return to more philosophical musings on errors, exception handling, installations, personalization, undo facilities and the future of user interfaces. Chujit Jeamsinkul 2 Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Applied Social Research Methods,Volume5) Yin, Robert K. Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994 Design researchers sometimes find themselves dealing with current phenomenon when the boundaries between context and phenomenon are not clear. Case study is a method appropriate to such situations. It uses multiple sources of evidence in order to answer 'how and why' questions. As the researcher has little or no control over events, case study as a scientific research method has been viewed with suspicion. Yin provides guidelines for case Judy table and valid research method that can be used for theory bulding and testing. All stages of case study research from research problem definition through reporting are thoroughly described and exemplified. Different strategies for single and multiple case studies are discussed. Lacking a clear and common understanding of what should constitute a design case study, the author's framework is highly valuable for researchers in the design domain. Suzan Boztepe 3 The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm Kelley, Tom New York: Currency Book, 2001 In contrast to the academic books on this list, this book is from a purely practitioner viewpoint. IDEO is a well-known and respected international design office. If the reader can get beyond the public relations tone of the writing, there are many practical ideas presented with regard to creativity and innovation. These are ideas that often get lost in an academic environment and they surely temper the other books on this list. The chapters on fostering creativity among design team members through brainstorming and prototype building, as well as the problems of introducing innovation in the marketplace and the development of the idea of experience design alone make this book worthwhile. Full of anecdotes, the firm's philosophy is firmly rooted in a human-centered design perspective. Light reading, this book reminds us of the joy of design and its contribution to everyday life. Sharon Poggenpohl 4 Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction Nardi, Bonnie A. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996 In the course of seeking a theory of practice in human-computer interaction studies, activity theory is introduced as one that is satisfactory for this purpose. Developed in the Soviet Union during the 1920s in the work of Lev Vygotsky, activity theory is a psychological theory that provides a hierarchical framework for describing activity. The need to understand how people actually use computers in their everyday lives has been well documented through use of activity theory in practice. An international community of researchers contributes to the effort of applying activity theory to problems of human-computer interaction in this book through providing comprehensive collections in various subjects. Among these are: activity theory as a framework for understanding human-computer interaction, comparison among representative research areas in the study of context, activity theory in practical design with case studies and theoretical development. Diagrams and tables well support the understanding of the various concepts introduced. Youn-kyung Lim 5 Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham and Gandhi Gardner, Howard New York: Basic Books, 1993 Though his comparitive study of prominent individuals in the fields of psychoanalysis, physics, art, music, poetry, dance and politics, Gardner provides illustrative rather than definitive support for the proposition that creative human activity should be understood as a function of interaction among various personal and contextual elements. …