Designing the Real World

The book of the 'Real World' Column from the SIGCHI Bulletin. This is a book about the technology people use as part of their everyday lives, and the spaces in which they live and work. The advent of interactive, digital media has given us a whole new area of technology, whose complexities mean that the design of user interaction is more important than ever before. Despite these new digital technologies, there is still a lot to be gained by looking at how people interact with existing things in the world around them. Ten years ago the author started writing the popular 'Real World' column for the SIGCHI bulletin (the ACM magazine for interaction designers). It was a column observing everyday interactions in both the real and the digital worlds. This book contains fifty of those columns covering fundamental topics in interaction design such as: . Switching things on and off . Choosing correct terminology for interfaces . Volume controls . Annoying sounds coming from alarm clocks . Making the ideal slice of toast They have all been gathered together into a book, with extra sections on observing the real world and a number of new columns. The book is both entertaining and enlightening. Lecturers will find it a good supplement to any course dealing with designing for people, while practitioners in industrial and digital design can learn from the observations and insights it contains. The content is an inspirational resource for interaction designers, web designers, architects, industrial designers and anybody who has ever said 'Who on earth designed that?!' while struggling with a bit of reluctant technology.

Lon Barfield is an interaction designer who has lectured and practised in England and Holland in both the commercial and academic arenas. He has written a number of texts on interaction design published by Addison Wesley and Bosko Books. He also writes the regular Real World column on interaction in the world around us.