Book review: Effective UI

Effective UI: The art of building a great user experience in software
Jonathan Anderson, John McRee, Robb Wilson & the EffectiveUI team
O’Reilly

I bought this book, hoping it would give tips and hints on making effective user interfaces, what works best, what tools to use, how to make effective wireframes, give example screenshots, etc. Let me tell you this first: it’s not that kind of book. Instead, this book is about educating you on the advantages of a good user experience (UX), how to generate support (buy-in) from your stakeholders and even a bit about agile methods.

Effective UI is written by people from EffectiveUI, a leading UX company in America. The book is their combined knowledge about getting people committed to good UX and getting the development / design team in the right state of mind. I found it very useful to better express my passion about (and the advantages of) good UX to clients, but as a developer who already does agile programming, I found the rest of the book less useful for me.

If you need to generate awareness in your company about UX or if you need to learn about all the advantages of good UX yourself, then don’t hesitate and buy this book. You won’t be disappointed. However, know what this book is and what it is not: if you expect real hands-on tips, you will be disappointed.