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Book Review
Designing Visual Interfaces
by KevinMullet and Darrell Sano
Book review by RaghuKolli
The expertise of graphic designers is n o t
very well understood in the software
community. Only a small fraction of the
commercial software development com-
munity (mostly the big players) hire the
services of graphic designers and/or
human interface designers. Though
developments like World Wide Web has
spawned offa sudden demand for
graphic design services, the bulk of Web
pages or graphical user interfaces for
that matter, are in reality designed by
the technical team members. Graphic
design is often viewed as an 'artistic' pro-
fession that provides a quick face-lift to
make software look 'user-friendly'. Gen-
erally speaking, the software engineer-
ing community seldom appreciated n o r
acknowledged the fact that certain
sound visual principles govern the
graphic design of user interfaces.
In this context, a much required book
titled 'Designing Visual Interfaces' by
Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano describes
'a number of important design rules and
techniques internalised by every visual
designer through coursework and studio
experience'. Drawing heavily from the
traditional print media, the authors
identify and apply several visual com-
munication principles to graphical user
interfaces of computer software. While
the techniques may not be entirely new
to most graphic designers, their applica-
tion to computer software will provide
an interesting insight, considering the
generous number (254) of illustrative
screen pictures used throughout the
book.
The field of human computer interac-
tion is littered with dozens of books. At
least half of them contain the word
'design' in their titles, but alas, many of
them do not even have any pictures or
good examples of contemporary user
82 April 1996 Volume 28, Number 2
interfaces. Moreover, the word 'design'
has been differently interpreted depend-
ing on the background of authors to
mean program code design or 'look-
and-feel' design. Mullet and Sano com-
ing from a background of industrial
design and graphic design respectively,
have done much justice in presenting
user interface design from the less
k n o w n visual communication perspec-
tive. Both of them are experienced user
interface designers having worked at
Sun (Mullet now works at Macromedia
and Sano works at Netscape) on a
number of projects and the book was
borne out of the tutorials they con-
ducted at CHI and other conferences
since 1993.
A professional faced with the task of
designing user interfaces for computer
software has many aspects to consider
from a communication point of view
according to Mullet and Sano. All the
elements in the design must be unified
to produce a coherent whole. Important
elements must be clear and well con-
trasted against others but must be har-
monious with each other. The display
elements must be structured by group-
ing together related ones and creating a
visual hierarchy of importance to reflect
the relationships between elements and
groups while maintaining a pleasing bal-
ance in the composition. Visual ele-
ments should be based on a flexible grid
so that different screens have a consist-
ent look. While visual images convey
information quickly, care must be taken
in their abstraction giving due consider-
ation to the cultural context in which
the images will be interpreted. F o r
maintaining a graphic style, the forms
must be distinctive, integrated, appro-
priate and comprehensive enough to
SIGCHI Bulletin
generalise across a range of design situa-
tions.
To realise these basic principles of
design, the authors offer a number of
techniques which are termed as: reduc-
tion, regularisation, alignment, optical
adjustment, repetition, selection, refine-
ment, generalisation and so on, to name
a few. Each technique is described with
examples and summarised into a step by
step process. For example, the steps sug-
gested for extracting an abstract image
from an original image through the
refinement technique reads as follows:
"1. Determine the appropriate level of
abstraction f~r your image set, based o n
subject maser, audience, and display reso-
lution. 2. Begin with an image seenfkom
the viewpoint including the most charac-
teristic contours. The source can be a
photo-graph, drawing, or sketch of the
object. 3. Use the trace overlay technique
to rapidly develop a series of drawings s~om
the initial image. Omit details until only
the most essential or characteristic elements
remain. Experiment with di~rent combi-
nations of elements to identi~ those that
best characterise the object~ and so o n .
Though these may sound like steps offa
do-it-yourself manual, the authors have
taken care to include a brief theoretical
background at the beginning of each
chapter covering Jacques Bertin's survey
of visual variables, Gestalt theory and
Charles Pierce's semiotics. The book is
well researched and the authors provide
a thorough criticism of common errors
found in user interfaces from every day
software for Macintosh, Windows,
UNIX and other platforms through
numerous examples.
The title 'Designing visual interfaces' is
somewhat misleading as the book
entirely omits the navigational and
dynamic aspects that are integral part of
visual interaction design of user inter-
faces. In fact, the authors do even men-
tion the design process of user interfaces
or clarify the roles of several visual
designers (graphic designer, interaction
designer, industrial designer, communi-
cation designer) in the software develop-
ment team. Considering the fact that
the authors are primarily reaching out to
the software engineering community, a
short description of the role of a
designer and the design methodology
would have been valuable. In that sense,
a more appropriate title for the book
would be 'Graphic design for user inter-
faces' as it only covers principles for
design of static dialogue boxes, icons
and windows layout. Though the book
itself is tightly structured and sensitively
designed in terms of typography and
layout, the content lacks integration and
the many individual principles and
techniques remain as discreet entities. In
other words, each topic can be read
independent of each other, instead of a
linear fashion - chapter by chapter from
beginning till end. Perhaps, an encyclo-
paedia like structure may have been
more appropriate to make the content
readily accessible.
Informative books like this are indeed
rare and 'Designing Visual Interfaces'
certainly joins the ranks of classic design
books like Edward Tufte's 'The Visual
Display of Quantitative Information'.
Though it is unlikely to guide a practis-
ing graphic designer through an inter-
SIG¢I'II Bulletin Volume 28, Number 2
face design project, it certainly provides
some general useful insights. A few years
down the line, it will be a valuable his-
torical reference of screen graphics cov-
ering the late eighties and early nineties.
Designing Visual Inte~ces - Communi-
catibn Oriented ~chniques by Kevin
Mullet and Darrell Sano SunSoft Press/
Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-303389-9,
1995, 273 pages, $46 http://
www.sun.com/cgi-bin/show?smi/ssoft-
press/books/Mullet/Mullet.html
Reviewer's Address: Delft University of
Technology Faculty of Industrial Design
Eng. Jaffalaan 9, 2628 BX Delft The
Netherlands T: +31 15 781438
r.kolli@io.tudelft, nl
April 1996 83