Classic UX books from the 1980s
By: Paul Mcinerney
Tags: Usability, Design, UX, Books, Ts

More of what was big in the ‘80s

Classics in this category had a major impact in their day and illustrate three different ways the field’s pioneers sought to document the rapidly evolving state of the art.

If you were a UX expert in academia or industry in the 1980s, you joined working groups, travelled to symposia, and generally had a good time comparing notes with your peers. Afterwards, you would publish a book to let everyone else know what you talked about. These efforts often tried to cover the entire field, unlike today’s more specialized efforts. One notable result is User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction (Edited by D. Norman and D. Draper, 1986). This proceedings includes 22 chapters, some with amusing titles like There’s More to Interaction Than Meets the Eye: Some Issues in Manual Input and Answers First, Then Questions. The editors point out that this book is not a how-to guide, but rather speculative and introspective essays intended to formulate new ways of thinking about the field.

[For more info: HCI Bib | Semantic Scholar entry ]

The 1980s witnessed some heroic efforts to capture everything worth knowing about the field. Apparently, that was a lot. Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Edited by R. Baecker and W. Buxton, 1987) weighs in at 714 pages, and for readers wanting even more, it includes a guide to further reading. Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (Edited by M. Helander, 1988) is also no lightweight, with 52 chapters and over 1100 pages. These books show how deep and broad the field was at that early stage. Both publications have since been updated and are even longer.

[For more info on Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: HCI Bib | Semantic Scholar | Publisher entry to later edition ]

[For more info on of Human-Computer Interaction: HCI Bib | Google Books | Semantic Scholar entry for the second edition (1997) ]

The third, and final, type of book we’ll look at painstakingly codifies prescriptive guidance on the myriad design details. Guidelines were such a common approach to writing about design that there was even a conference paper entitled Guidelines for Designing Design Guidelines. These books were a response to the fact that many UIs were being designed by developers — people with sometimes neither the training nor inclination to deliver a great user experience. So, guidance had to be spelled out in excruciating detail.

Handbook of Screen Format Design (W.O. Galitz, 1985) approached the topic by covering different types of screens in turn, including data entry, inquiry, and menu screens. This author went on to write several more books in the subsequent decade including the amusingly named It’s Time to Clean Your Windows: Designing GUIs That Work. Another stand-out from the 1980s, Human-Computer Interface Design Guidelines (M. Brown, 1988), covered similar ground along with some bonus content: guidance on implementation and a checklist for auditing designs for compliance with the guidelines.

[For more info on Handbook of Screen Format Design: HCI Bib ]

[For more info on Human-Computer Interface Design Guidelines: HCI Bib | Google Books ]