First published seven years ago-just before the World Wide Web exploded into dominance in the software world-About Face rapidly became a bestseller. While the ideas and principles in the original book remain as relevant as ever, the examples in About Face 2.0 are updated to reflect the evolution of the Web.

Interaction Design professionals are constantly seeking to ensure that software and software-enabled products are developed with the end-user's goals in mind, that is, to make them more powerful and enjoyable for people who use them. About Face 2.0 ensures that these objectives are met with the utmost ease and efficiency.

Alan Cooper (Palo Alto, CA) has spent a decade making high-tech products easier to use and less expensive to build-a practice known as Interaction Design. Cooper is now the leader in this growing field. Mr. Cooper is also the author of two bestselling books that are widely considered indispensable texts. About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design, intro-duced the first comprehensive set of practical design principles. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum explains how talented people and companies continually create aggravating high-tech products that fail to meet customer expectations.

Robert Reimann has spent the past 15 years pushing the boundaries of digital products as a designer, writer, lecturer, and consultant. He has led dozens of interaction design projects in domains including e-commerce, portals, desktop productivity, authoring environments, medical and scientific instrumentation, wireless, and handheld devices for startups and Fortune 500 clients alike. Joining Cooper in 1996, Reimann led the development and refinement of manygoal-directed design methods described in About Face 2.0. He has lectured on these methods at major universities and to international industry audiences. He is a member of the advisory board of the UC Berkeley Institute of Design.

The "father" of Visual Basic, Alan Cooper, presents a methodology of user interface design that he has distilled from many years of creating award-winning personal computer software. This book does not focus on code; instead it discusses highly technical topics in clear English. Readers may not agree with everything Cooper has to say about software design, but they will find his ideas pertinent, thought-provoking, and perceptive.

"About Face", aimed at software developers, proposes the creation of a new profession of software design.

Dear Reader,

In the eight years since this book was first published, the ideas that seemed do radical at first have become standard models across the industry. Many practicioners have adopted them and seen dramatic improvements in their products.

This book would not have been possible without the commitment of the many organizations over the past decade that hired Cooper, my design consulting company. They demonstrated a great measure of self-confidence to break from the pack.

By the same token, the many brilliant and talented people who have worked at Cooper have pushed the limits of my original thinking far beyond where I started. They have put their professional reputations on the line to prove that there is a higher standard and better ways to achieve it.

In this significantly revised and expanded edition of the book, Robert Reimann and I have rewritten and reorganized every page. Together we have:

• Updated examples to reflect the current state of the art, and included more examples from Cooper design solutions
• Included references to recent technology and industry developments
• Added an entirely new section covering Cooper's Goal-Directed Design methods such as personas, goals, and scenarios in detail
• Added new chapters on visual design, as well as interaction design issues for embedded systems and the Web
• Added a bibliography of design reference sources

Thanks for joining me in the pursuit of better software, happier programmers and designers, more successful businesses, and extremely satisfied users.

Sincerely,

Alan Cooper

Founder & Chairman of the Board

Cooper

"About Face 2.0 is one of thevery rare design books that's fun to read, even though it rocks fundamental beliefs and packs the page with useful information. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what the software design process should be (but usually isn't). The perspective is unique: intellectually rigorous enough for academics while remaining focused on helping practitioners. I'd recommend this book to anybody in the business."

– Harley Manning, Research Director, Forrester Research

Includes bibliographical references (p. 515-518) and index.

The cleverest code in the world is worth nothing if a program's interface proves an unwieldy barrier to users. That's why programmers and designers alike will benefit from "About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. Here, respected software designer Alan Cooper shares his own real-world experience and design principles so that you, too, can fashion intuitive, effective user interfaces. Applicable to multimedia and Web sites as well as application software, "About Face is an invaluable resource for design professionals.