Swing, James Bond, interface design, Dresden, an Elizibethan England children’s novel, and more — it’s all good.

I just picked up three books on Design, based largely on the recommendations in the JavaPosse Roundup 09 sessions on the topic.  I haven’t read them yet, but just perusing them makes them look to be a lot of fun.  First, the Amazon links:

1. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
2. Don’t Make Me Think!  A common sense approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
3. The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams

Everyday Things is actually about physical, industrial design, but a lot of the anecdotes, photographs, and diagrams seem to apply just as well to software design.  The Design Book steps a bit closer to my familiar software realms by covering general graphic design principles, largely for print media.  It covers the basics of Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, and Contrast, and a host of other things including color and type (font to us normals).  And lastly, Don’t Make Me Think! covers style and web patterns.  It has juicy bits on brevity, breadcrumbs, scanning patterns, and tons more.

I can’t wait!  Practical design has always been something I like.  I want to learn the best patterns.

Quality:

1. Amtrak:  Nice, dead simple way of traveling.  Lots of quality DS time.  Also, mobile phone browser support, very slick.
2. Chicago Public Transit.  It kinda makes sense once you try it.
3. Larry Constantine.  Awesome UI design topics.
4. Neal Ford and “Uncle Bob” Martin were great on code quality and professional development.
5. Conference lunches were decent.
6. The fact that our windows had “Please keep closed” on them.  (Picture coming soon!)

Complaints:

1. Crazy & loud people on the train.
2. The Hyatt Regency hotel is in a bit of a void; no nearby restaurants outside of the Hotel’s two or three.
3. Constant sound of running water and elevators in the room.
4. The Amazon guy never even showing up for the ECC and S3 talk.
5. Terrible swag/bag.
6. No snacks in the morning or evening.
7. Sponsored by Game Developer Magazine, but no giveaway copies?
8. Michael Rozlog‘s “You’ve Just Inherited 1,000,000 Lines of code… now what?”, who had a great concept but just couldn’t get it out of a sales pitch.  Hint:  Solve the problem you set out to do, don’t apologize that you just happen to be using your product to do so.  Just use your tool if it is the best, tell us why the reports help, and make me want the product.
9. Rebecca Wirfs-Brock‘s “Skills for the Agile Designer.”  Great concepts and techniques, but the notes and the spoken presentation were disjointed and hard to follow.

Next posts will be coming soon, covering the topics I enjoyed.