User-Centered Web Site Development: A Human-Computer Interaction Approach

Here is a book that presents Web design as an application of key ideas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

This text is the only one of its kind that addresses Human-Computer Interaction as it relates to website design. It stresses HCI principles, not just Web implementation techniques. The book provides a working knowledge of Web design. aimed at creating Web pages and sites that are attractive and user-friendly. while allowing students to become familiar with the concepts and terminology of Web design as a basis for further study.

Major themes include:

• Human Computer Interaction: Chapters 1-8 cover the importance of knowing your customer and the significance of visual and content organization of a website, as well as navigation design and the crucial issues of prototyping and user testing.
• Supporting Disciplines: The impact of color, typography, and multimedia are discussed in terms of website development.
• Major Web Issues: The significance of accessibility, globalization, and personalization are discussed in the context of a successful website.

Rich in pedagogy, the book contains more than 300 review questions, exercises, and projects. A full suite of instructor supplements is also available.

This is an innovative and timely book that introduces the reader to the human component of Web site design. Readers will be able to do a much better job of writing front ends or other interactive software, as the book describes the creation of user-friendly Web sites.

In the context of Human-Computer Interaction and Web design, this book covers such topics as user and task analysis, content organization, visual organization, navigation design, prototyping, and evaluation, as well as color, typography, multimedia, accessibility, globalization.

For individuals interested in entering the field of Web page and site design, as well as industrial team workers in HCI and Web site development.

Don McCracken is Professor of Computer Science at City College, CUNY, and the author of more than 20 textbooks in computer science. He is a past president of ACM and the 1992 recipient of the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education.

Rosalee Wolf is Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems of DePaul University, where she was the first Director of the HCI program and was instrumental in creating the first bachelor's program and the second master's program in HCI in the United States. A -former NASA fellow, she leads the groundbreaking American Sign Language project at DePaul.