The Art of Interactive Design by Chris Crawford
BUY IT NEW
- $29.95 List price$28.45 Online Price$25.60 Member price(Save 14%)Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
See Details
(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: December 2002
- 408pp
- Sales Rank: 458,205
Buy it Used: 8 copies from $10.96 See All Available
Customers who bought this also bought
Product Details
- Pub. Date: December 2002
- Publisher: No Starch Press San Francisco, CA
- Format: Paperback, 408pp
- Sales Rank: 458,205
- ISBN-13: 9781886411845
- ISBN: 1886411840
Synopsis
About the Author
The Art of Interactive Design demonstrates what interactivity is, why it's important, and how to design interactive software, games, and websites that work. Crawford's mellifluous style makes for fascinating and idea-inspiring reading that encourages readers to think about design in new ways. "[Crawford] could have written a book like 'Ten Easy Steps to Making Your Programs Easier to Use,'" says Dale Yocum, the founder of Clientele Software. "Instead, he's moved up a level and explored the Zen of interactivity. . . . Chris makes a difficult, nebulous topic approachable."
"Computers suck," says Crawford. "They don't do what you want them to do and they often do what you don't want them to do. And it's all attributable to unintentional design errors." He adds, "I wrote this for everybody involved-directly or indirectly-in software design."
Annotation
A nontechnical book on the theory of interactivity design, this guide has clear examples and applications that explain what interactivity is, how it works, why it's important and how to design good software.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Chris Crawford is the "grand old man" of computing game design. He sold his first computer game in 1978, joined Atari in 1979, and led Games Research there. During his time at Atari, he wrote the first edition of "The Art of Computer Game Design" (Osborne, 1984), which has now become a classic in the field. After Atari collapsed in 1984, Chris became a freelance computer game designer. All in all, Chris has 14 published computer games to his credit—all of which he designed and programmed himself. He founded, edited, and wrote most of "The Journal of Computer Game Design," the first periodical devoted to game design. He founded and led the Computer Game Developers' Conference (now the Game Developers' Conference) in its early years. Chris has lectured on game design at conferences and universities all over the world. For the last ten years, he has been developing technology for interactive storytelling.
Customer Reviews
Verboseby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
April 19, 2004: An amusing book. Perhaps Crawford's most striking suggestion is that a project should be headed by a designer who has an arts background and who is also able to program. To him, this is an ideal, which may take the field decades to achieve. I am dubious as to how necessary this is, in the first place. He claims that it is easier to find someone from the arts and have her learn the rudiments of programming, than vice versa. But in a specialised environment, like engineering, science or education, it may be better for her to hail from that field, so that she can better know what users might want. Granted, though, for a mass market audience, a more general background might be better. When it comes to specific suggestions regarding the design of a program, he has good ideas. Like using progress bars if a task takes longer than ten seconds. Or using first or second person active voice, rather than a third person passive. These do increase the interactivity. The book is somewhat verbose. He writes at length to illustrate his points. But a little brevity may have been possible, without losing any clarity.
A classic book on the theory of interactivity.by Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
July 18, 2003: There are lots of book on how to program or use this bit of software or another, but this book teaches fundemental problems that most authors do not even think about. Some of it seems common sense, until you notice how many websites and programs violate his points and suffer for it. Many of his arguments reason thru problems I have never seen considered in other books. He talks about language and procol design, metaphors for algorithms, adaptable anthopormorphization, ui design in programs, webpages and interactive fiction. However if you already own his 'Understanding Interactivity', (the earlier version of this book) I do not feel that there is enough difference to make buying this one worthwhile.
loading...
loading...
loading...