New chapters of the section ‘Interaction’ published in Ilya Birman’s User Interface

New chapters have come out in section ‘Interaction’ of textbook User Interface—‘Feedback’ and ‘Paging and Scrolling’.

Has this situation ever happened to you before? You arrive at your friend’s house, you ring the doorbell, but it doesn’t make a sound. So you ring it again. Still no sound. So you knock on the door. Then, before you know it, your friend swings open the door and snaps, “Give me a second, I’m not deaf?!” The issue here was a lack of feedback. The doorbell interface is simple. When it comes to more complex interfaces like driving a car, an airplane, or using a graphic editor, feedback quality is all the more crucial. In the chapter ‘Feedback’, you’ll get to find out why steering the wheel of a car is more convenient than pressing the arrows of a keyboard in driving simulators.

There was a time when scrollbars were just another screen control along with buttons, checkboxes, and input fields. In today’s interface, the scrolling gesture is considerably more important than clicking. Ilya Birman takes us through the history of paging and scrolling. He subsequently goes on to demonstrate how today they have turned out to be mere variations of the very same interaction.

After the chapters, there is an interactive test. It includes questions about studied material and tasks on user interface evaluation.

The chapter ‘Aiming’ is available for free. In the chapter Ilya Birman talks about the placement and content of the interface elements. He explains how to simplify hitting buttons and inputs with a mouse and finger.

Preorder is available as before and you can start reading the book right now. If you choose to subscribe to the book before it’s fully published, you will get 2 extra months free. Your official subscription time hasn’t started ticking yet⁠—we’ll start your subscription clock later. The book is being published in parts, and the readers still have their paid year plus 2 months as a gift.