martytdx's Full Review: 37 Signals and Jason Fried - Defensive Design for ...
As I go along my learning curve of web design and development (and compared to some of these guys out there, I have a LONG way to go), I find some helpful resources. This has been especially true in my quest to learn and implement Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in a big way. So, I've been reading many of the best books out there, such as CSS Guru Eric Meyer's Cascading Style Sheets - the Definitive Reference and Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman. My boss was helping us out with our reading material, picking up More Eric Meyer on CSS and Defensive Design for the web by the folks at 37 Signals (www.37signals.com).
I am familiar with the guys from 37 Signals - Matthew Linderman and Jason Fried - having checked out their site and read their articles for a while. I trust that they know what they are doing, and have the expertise to have written this book. However, having made my way through it, I'm not sure that this book is everything that I would have expected from them.
[ • about 37 Signals • ]
This respected design site is run by the team of Matthew Linderman and Jason Fried. Since 1995, they have been helping companies develop and redevelop their websites into more functional, USABLE sites on the web. They also have been teaching designers to better their web designs throughout the country. Their blog, Signals vs. Noise (www.37signals.com/svn/) is a great set of information for the designer to use to improve their own work, and their opinions are well-received and respected throughout the design community.
[ • defensive DESIGN • ]
The purpose of this book is to look at many of the structural design mistakes that are made with websites. The book is primarily focused on e-commerce sites, rather than informational or personal sites, but the topics covered aren't for the person developing a family website. Instead, they look at user experiences and have developed 40 guidelines for developers to make a more functional, useful and customer friendly site.
Primarily, they are looking at how navigation and user input can be facilitated, and how errors or problems are resolved for the user. The guys behind the book have more than adequate experience in the field, so their topics are well-picked - if a little obvious (in my opinion).
Their goal - to provide a quick hit book of the most common errors and offer suggestions on how to improve your site to reduce or eliminate these problems. Examples abound of both 'good' sites and 'bad' sites, letting you see screenshots of what to do and not do in your designs.
[ • book LAYOUT • ]
The book has 11 Chapters covering topics from showing the problem to offering a helpful hand to how to handle Out of Stock and Unavailable Items. Each chapter highlights a specific problem (Chapter 1 is "Show the Problem", while Chapter 4 is "Bulletproof Forms"), and within each chapter are 3-8 guidelines related to that topic, telling the design how to overcome common design mistakes. Each guideline, such as guideline 8 (Chapter 4) - Highlight either required or optional fields, is followed by a short blurb about the problem and solution. They then offer up examples of thumbs up and thumbs down examples of what they are talking about.
Occasionally, we get head-to-head comparisons of similar sites to show how following the guidelines worked for one, while not having them made the site fail. We are also given occasional As If... analogies to put the reasoning into a real-world situation. For example, when discussing error messages, the guideline suggests using an apologetic tone. They show a screen shot of a helpful Hallmark.com error page, and offer this As If on p.53:
As If: Why is this good? It's as if a kind waiter apologizes for my meal's delay and promises to bring it out the instant it's ready.
Customer quotes are sometimes given to provide back-up for their views, although most of their observations aren't really questionable. This book presents things that are known to be issues, and puts them in a single reference to help designers tackle these problems before the site is rolled out.
The illustrations and examples are good, giving ample evidence of how not following the guidelines can make for a user experience failure. Their blurbs about each screenshot are rather simple, but this isn't supposed to be a technical guide, so it is adequate.
[ • what I LIKE • ]
» The writers offer a lot of good information and real world examples so you can see the good and bad in action (although, perhaps ironically, some of the sites mentioned have made improvements to their site that address what's in the book - rendering the examples moot on the current web).
» The solutions and advice they offer is good and solid advice, if a little basic for me. Still it's nice to have it all in one place. They DO offer up solutions, if not necessarily the methods to implement them. And the book is nice and small, which makes it perfect for your desktop bookshelf.
» The book is very well written - clear and easy to understand, even for the beginner. For someone who is starting up with their own website, particularly an e-commerce site, this would help them avoid many of the pitfalls that hurts such sites. Granted, because of the lack of technical details, they would have to search elsewhere for the solutions, but they would at least know what to look for even if they use a design company to create their site. Knowledge is power, and having the knowledge of common missteps in web design can make an owner help his designers provide the best usability they can.
» The Contingency Design and Contingency Design Test sections are both very helpful, and offer up a quick step-by-step way for a user to look over their new site. They aren't complete but will address the issues brought up by the book and make the site that much better before launch (or after launch if you are fixing it).
[ • what I DON'T • ]
» Much of the material seems to be fairly obvious if you do design - although they try to explain the reasons and give examples for the guidelines. Still, I think this could have been shortened into a much smaller booklet or fold-up guide.
» This is designed as a guide - a quick read that offers quick-hit tips to improve your site and the customer's experience on it (as I said, it focuses almost exclusively on e-commerce sites). They offer a list of dos and don'ts but not many suggestions on how to actually accomplish those changes.
Example: Telling people that they should have a 404 page (Page Not Found Error) that better describes how the missing page might be found is great. But how would one go about doing this? Adding references to some good tutorials or articles on the subject would help. Granted, the mutable nature of the web makes giving specific URLs sometimes difficult in a book, but perhaps a "Useful Search Engine Terms and Phrases" section could have helped those who did want to learn more.
» Some of the examples date back to 2002 - practically a generation in Internet time.
[ • final THOUGHTS • ]
I went back and forth about whether I liked this book or not. It is a handy book of quick hits for design functionality, and it is written by those whose expertise I trust. However, this could have been easily produced as a booklet or desktop reference for half the cost. Maybe I'm too close - maybe I've read enough blogs, articles and tutorials, but much of this seems to be common sense. Sure the examples are nice, but I feel like they really re-state the point in most cases. After reading the book, while I found some of the information helpful, it doesn't seem like enough material to warrant the $24.99 cover price.
[ • css REVIEWS • ] • Mozilla Firefox 0.9
I love this new browser, which does everything I want it to - and more. Internet Explorer - be afraid, be very afraid...
• WestCiv StyleMaster
A great software for getting someone started with CSS and as a time-saving software when doing basic CSS.
The textbook, Defensive Design for the Web : How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points, by Matthew Linderman and Jason Fried...More at Textbooks.com
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