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W. Lidwell, K. Holden and J. Butler: Universal Principles of Design Rockport, Gloucester, MA, 2003, 224 pp, Hardcover, $40.00, ISBN 10-1-59253-007-9
Introduction
This book is a valuable resource for anyone involved with the design of instruction. Universal design is a concept that has risen to popularity during the past decade. Defined as making products useful for as many people as possible, the term is applied to situations involving special needs populations and even people with diverse learning styles or preferences. The concept has been applied to the design of products, interfaces, and even physical environments. Ironically, the reviewers of this text concluded their work on World Usability Day. World Usability Day, November 14, 2006, promoted the value of usability engineering and user-centered design and the belief that every user has the responsibility to ask for things that work better.
Currently available only in hard cover, Universal Principles of Design is the kind of book that would be just as suited to an instructional designer's library as it would be to a coffee table in the center of your living room. The book's clean, two-page format, consisting of a single page of text with an opposing page of illustrations (on each design principle), and the soft hues, simple font, and alphabetical presentation of principles, serves to model many of the 100 concepts it describes. Each of the various concepts, taken from numerous disciplines, is described in terms of utility, misuse, and suggestions for implementation, with supporting references. In addition to a standard table of contents, the authors provide a categorical table of contents that presents the principles under five guiding questions. These questions frame the contents into categories that a novice designer might consider when embarking on a project.
Examples of the principles covered in the text include techniques rooted in psychology (e.g., operant conditioning), engineering (e.g., structural forms), and classical architecture (e.g., golden ratio). Contemporary standards like the advance organizer, chunking, and mnemonic devices, as well as more obscure practices, like baby-face bias and threat detection, are all given equal mention. In certain cases, the authors provide interesting references to historical applications of a spécifie technique, such as how the government considered using pigeon's during World War II to direct bombs to their...