Flex Article

Designing for Flex – Appendix B: For further reading

This list of resources was written for the Designing for Flex series. To learn more about designing rich Internet applications and rich desktop applications, check out the Flex Interface Guide on the Flex Developer Center.

Download all parts of the FIG series as PDF files that you can print and read offline: adobe_flex_interface_guide.zip (ZIP, 5.7MB)

This article series covered a broad range of topics highly relevant to Flex application design at a fairly high level. Fortunately, few if any of the ideas presented here were new and many are covered extensively in other publications. If you find yourself itching to learn more about a particular topic, you may find some of the resources below invaluable.

• About Face 2: The Essentials of Interaction Design
  Alan Cooper & Robert Reimann. Wiley Publishing Inc. (2003) ISBN: 0-7645-26413
  Widely considered the bible of Interaction Design, About Face 2: The Essentials of Interaction Design, covers everything from researching users to best practices for software behavior to detailed visual communication standards. Many of the ideas in "Planning your application," "Making your application fast," and "Making your application safe" appear in much greater detail in About Face 2: The Essentials of Interaction Design. Note that a new version, About Face 3, is now available, written by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann and David Cronin.
  
• Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems
  Hugh Beyer & Karen Holtzblatt. Academic Press. (1998) ISBN: 1-55860-411-1
  Beyer and Holtzblatt present a fully-developed research and design process in this informative text on design research. Although few designers, developers, and user researchers follow the Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems process to the letter, many make extensive use of some of the more popular research and design techniques it contains such as contextual inquiry, work modeling, and paper prototyping. The techniques discussed in "Planning your application" are based on commonly practiced portions of Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems.
  
• The Designer’s Guide to Web Applications Part I: Structure and Flows
  Hagan Rivers. User Interface Engineering. (2006)
  Hagan Rivers describes the "hub and spoke" and "interview" structural design patterns in this paper and explains how to apply them to application design. Although her examples are more in the style of traditional HTML applications than rich Flex applications, her two core patterns can form a basis for designing information and process structures as described in "Structuring your application."
  
• Designing for Interaction
  Dan Saffer. New Riders. (2007) ISBN: 0-321-43206-1
  Dan Saffer’s introduction to the theory and practice of interaction design is one of the best books available for those interested in getting into the field. The book defines interaction design and surveys techniques ranging from qualitative research to wireframing to device design. Although possibly too introductory for experienced interaction designers, it is an invaluable resource for those outside or new to the field. (Full disclosure: The author is a personal friend of mine, however, I don’t get kickbacks despite repeated attempts on my part.)
  
• Designing Interfaces
  Jenifer Tidwell. O’Reilly Media Inc. (2006) ISBN: 0-596-00803-1
  Designing Interfaces consists of a library of interaction "design patterns," or solutions to specific appliction design problems. The patterns cover everything from application organization to navigation to page structure to visual and control design. The book is an excellent reference for any designer or UI developer to have on their shelf. The ideas behind the patterns appear in almost every chapter of this paper.
  
• Designing Visual Interfaces
  Kevin Mullet & Darrell Sano. SunSoft Press. (1995) ISBN: 0-13-303389-9
  Mullet & Sano’s book is a bit dated in its examples but not in its principles. The text covers primarily visual design principles including the visual hierarchy concepts discussed in "Structuring your application" and some of the information design principles discussed in "Designing content displays." Although lacking in coverage of deeper interaction design issues, this is an excellent primer on visual design as a communication tool and reminds us that visuals aren’t primarily about making the application "pretty."
  
• Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical User Interface
  Bret Victor. Go to article. (2006) Retrieved August 6, 2007.
  Although perhaps unnecessarily provocative in tone, Bret Victor’s article does an excellent job of describing the importance of designing applications around content and information rather than controls and other user interface elements. The article covers many of the principles that appear in "Designing content displays" in greater detail.
  
• Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research
  Mike Kuniavski. Morgan Kaufmann. (2003) ISBN: 1558609237
  Kuniavski’s book is an invaluable reference for design research techniques, such as those mentioned in "Planning your application." He covers a wide variety of research methodologies and provides detailed tips and instructions on how to apply each of them. Although perhaps not as good as having a dedicated design researcher on staff, reading this book is the next best thing.
  
• Reconciling Market Segments and Personas
  Elaine Brechin. Go to article. Retrieved August 6, 2007.
  Brechin’s article covers the differences between understanding markets and understanding users, and makes the case for why both are necessary for application design in much greater depth than I have attempted in this paper. Her article is an excellent read for those who aren’t yet sold on the necessity of understanding users from a qualitative perspective.
  
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
  Scott McCloud. HarperCollins. (1993) ISBN: 0-06-097625-X
  Although not a text on application design, Scott McCloud’s well-known book on the art of comics covers many of the principles necessary for sound Flex application design. He discusses visual communication and motion principles in an easy-to-read comic book format. Many interface designers also use his techniques when drafting scenarios and storyboards, as discussed in "Structuring your application."
  
• Usability of Flash Applications and Tools: Design Guidelines for Flash-Based Functionality on the Web
  Hoa Loranger & Jakob Nielsen. Nielsen Norman Group. (2002)
  This report provides a comprehensive and exhaustive coverage of usability problems and solutions with traditional Flash-based RIAs. Most of the principles discussed still apply to Flex applications. Use it as a checklist to ensure your application is not falling into traps already uncovered by its predecessors.
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
  Edward R. Tufte. Graphics Press. (2001) ISBN: 978-0961392147
  Tufte’s classic book on information design describes principles of data visualization as a means of assisting human understanding. Although he focuses primarily on the visualization of statistical data, many of the ideas apply to other types of content as well. The book covers topics introduced in the article "Designing content displays."
  
• Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization
  Luke Wroblewski. Boxes and Arrows. (2003). Go to article. Retrieved August 6, 2007.
  Luke Wroblewski’s article gives a nice primer on visual hierarchy and its use in the design of web applications. Although not as in depth as "Designing visual interfaces," it is short and easy to follow. I recommend it to anyone new to the topic who needs a brief introduction to the visual organizational principles described in "Structuring your application."
  

Acknowledgements

Although this article series has my name on it, many people contributed to its development. I’d like to thank my reviewers, Sho Kuwamoto, Phil Costa, Steven Heintz, Narciso Jaramillo, Josh Ulm, Jeremy Clark, Deb Galdes, Tom Hobbs, and Amy Wong for providing me with extremely helpful feedback. Special thanks to Sho Kuwamoto and Phil Costa for envisioning this project and pushing me to complete it and to my managers, Josh Ulm and Jeremy Clark, for finding the time for me to give it the attention it needed. Finally, extra-special thanks to Tom Hobbs, Narciso Jaramillo, Sho Kuwamoto and Peter Flynn for guiding my thinking on many of the topics that appear in the articles.

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