Designing Interfaces mini book review

I finished up the Designing Interfaces book I mentioned a couple posts ago. Overall it was a decent book and I would recommend it. Being a design pattern fan, I appreciate that this book breaks down common design practices into patterns and tells you when you would want to use them and what kinds of problems it solves. The most useful parts of the book were those that dealt with program flow and layout and the last section that dealt with graphic design. The section that dealt with all the UI widgets was good to have but most programmers should be familiar with these already. The author was wise to include examples from current popular programs like iTunes which makes it easy to recognize and understand the patterns.

On a side note, while reading this book, I realized that what I really want is a book on graphic design, not UI patterns. I already have a good grasp on workflow, widgets and layouts - now I want to make it look good. If anyone is interested, I found this nice little list of graphic design tips.

In conclusion - I would say this is a good book for anyone who wants to get started designing interfaces or people looking to brush up on their knowledge. It covers all the bases. The one fault of this book is that it's a bit short. It might have been nice to have some case studies. But, it's short length makes it a good reference.