Imitation in Education: Its Nature, Scope and Significance ... Book

The author had three goals for this book (7):
(1) To add to the foundation of interdisciplinary interaction design principles and theories
(2) To create a visual language
(3) To encourage further exploration

Those goals were met. This book is a great primer for interaction design practices, theories, processes, and artifacts across disciplines. There is some helpful, interesting information here.
(Were some important terms ignored? I have no idea, but I appreciated what was included.)

The Good

-- The “guide to understanding the book” tells readers how to use the book and explains the design. For example, instead of only identifying where the reader can locate the term’s description, Pannofino explains that the descriptions were “written in conversational tone for easy accessibility.” The book becomes its own example of good design (8).

-- Many definitions include best practices.

-- Some definitions warn of potential mistakes (e.g. Site Map, 75).

The Bad (not bad, just possible ways to improve the next edition)

-- Add indices, including one by discipline.

-- Add a glossary. Even though that sounds weird in a book of definitions, it would have helped to have a glossary of the terms used in the definitions. If the term is unfamiliar, then some of the related concepts may be too. For example, “negative space,” “visual rest,” and “reading gravity” in Activating Compositional Space (10).

-- Digital Skeuomorphs is an example of a term defined by what it does rather than what it is, although the visual examples end up assisting with that.

-- Sometimes I wanted a more explicit statement about the importance of the term, or if not importance, then what I’m supposed to do with it. Analog and Digital Devices (12), Cartesian Coordinates System (18), and Sequence and Motion (70) are examples.

-- I thought Personas (62) could have been better, and Principle of Least Effort (64) could have had a better example. Is chunking only visual or is it contextual (19)? The explanation of Content Inventory (22) is confusing; how does one conduct a tool?

-- The authors states that interaction design is the design of digital devices and interfaces (6), but includes Poka-Yoke (63) and says there isn’t a clear cut example of it in the digital landscape. While that could seem contradictory, I was happy to see this term included, and I wonder if the discussion of User Error (80) could be applied here. It may have helped illustrate the importance of this term.

The Ugly

I’m not one of those people who points out mistakes and typos. We all make them. (I likely did in this review.) I am going to comment on the errors in this book. I found them distracting.

-- Display Factors (31) labels an example incorrectly by mixing up left and right. (Am I correct? I read it four times to make sure it wasn’t me.)

-- “Psychologist George Miller is theory refers to” (21).

-- Eyetracking (34) needs a pronoun in the first sentence. You cannot follow a user’s eye path if you’re reading. The user is reading.

-- Several examples of incorrect or odd prepositions: envision into, advantage to, etc.

-- Footnote punctuation is inconsistent.