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

The book is intended for web and user interface designers, editors, managers, and everyone who is involved in product development.

An interface designer needs to find words to label user controls and navigation elements. It is convenient to start learning the basics of interface editing with ‘stopwords’⁠—garbage words that can be deleted or replaced with informative ones. This chapter gives examples of stopwords found in screen headings, button and menu labels, and error message texts. For each one an example of good wording is given: unambiguous, informative, and humane.

This chapter deals with a side effect of technology dependence: a machine‑like language that interfaces sometimes use. Computers make us understand, and sometimes force us to speak a language that is unnatural to humans. It should be the other way around. The author goes through sources of robot language such a automated composition of sentences and poor translation.

After the chapters, there is an interactive test on the whole Language section.

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.