永远伟大的设计

我正坐在百老汇的一间咖啡厅里写这篇文章。我坐在这里已经有一会了，写文章，回邮件，用手机和我的客户联系，看着窗外移动的世界，享受着 3美元一杯的咖啡。昨天晚上，我很荣幸作为嘉宾出席了在纽约市举行的的设计与营销的学术会议。那是一个美好的夜晚，我的演讲收到了很好的效果。会议结束后，组织部门的工作人员将我领到了离时代广场差不多一个街区远的一家非常棒的餐厅用餐。在享受美味的晚餐的同时，我们的话题自然地就转到了设计和推广出色的产品与服务上。谈了一会后，其中一个人问我，在我看来哪个设计是永远伟大的的设计。

Jordan, Pat. uiGarden (2005). (Chinese) Design>Usability>User Interface

界面的形式：纸原型和产品原型相结合

草图和原型是产品的整个设计过程中不可缺少的一个环节，这对设计概念的产生，以及和他人进行讨论和评价时都十分重要，尤其是在以用户为中心设计的情况下。原型的方法是设计教育的必修部分、是专家的工具包，但如果能够将这一过程展示给产品和界面开发过程中其他学科的人士，也具备巨大的价值。

Hanington, Bruce. uiGarden (2006). (Chinese) Articles>Web Design>User Interface

Adducive: User Interface Design, Analysis & Production

Tips and articles on software user interface design, including handheld, speech recognition, desktop, and web-based software, with a focus on the software development process and issues in internationalization. The site also describes services offered and my approach to user interface design.

Krause, Brian R. Adducive.com (1998). Design>User Interface>Software

Agent vs. Agent

The phrase User agent or user-agent or UA or browser or client or client application or client software program...all pretty much refer to the same thing. Or maybe not.

evolt (2002). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Web Browsers

Ajax for Lightboxes

In a world where everything is designed to amaze and distract, it's awfully difficult to get a user's attention. Learn how to use new techniques such as lightboxes, pop-ups, windows, and fading messages with your Ajax tools to get your users' eyes on your content.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Ajax

Apple Human Interface Guidelines  

These guidelines are designed to assist you in developing products that provide Mac OS X users with a consistent visual and behavioral experience across applications and the operating system.

Apple Inc. (2003). Design>User Interface>Operating Systems

The Application of Model Matching Principle in User Interface Design: Part 1

By its nature, all UI consists of two parts: input and output. When designing output information, the matching between system model and conceptual model actually results in another commonly used UI design principle: 'use users' language'. To be more specific, when displaying information to users, such as prompt messages or error messages, the words or terms used should be understandable to users.

Zhang, Liang. uiGarden (2008). Design>User Interface

The Application of Model Matching Principle in User Interface Design: Part 2

For programmers, a programming language is a software tool. Its interface consists of its lexicon, grammar and semantic rules. From this view, using a language to do programming is actually using that tool to accomplish something. As we will see shortly, different languages vary greatly in the degree of how they get close to programmer's conceptual model.

Zhang, Liang. uiGarden (2008). Design>User Interface

An Application of the Principles of Minimalism to the Design of Human-Computer Interfaces  

Minimalism in information design, specifically as applied to user tutorials and manuals, was introduced in the early 1980s through the work of Dr. John M. Carroll, then a cognitive psychologist at the IBM Watson Research Center. Since that time, theorists and practitioners have further elucidated the principles of minimalism and have attempted to apply it to a variety of situations in which people attempt to learn how to use a software application. Most recently, a new exposition of minimalist principles and practices was published by MIT Press. This work, Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel, represents the work of leading theorists and practitioners in the field.

Hackos, JoAnn T. ComTech Services (1999). Design>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Minimalism

Applying Color Theory to Digital Displays

For backgrounds behind text, use solid, contrasting colors, and avoid the use of textures and patterns, which can make letterforms difficult to distinguish or even illegible. Choose combinations of text color and background color with care. Value contrast between body text and its background color should be a minimum of about eighty percent.

Gabriel-Petit, Pabini. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Interface>Accessibility>Color

Art and Culture

This site offers a unique approach to contextual navigation, and one that has gotten the attention of many reviewers. From the site: 'ArtandCulture.com is a dynamic destination that delivers unique access to the best arts and cultural content and related products available on the web today....focused on creating the context that makes information truly meaningful.' In this review, I'll focus on some of the interesting navigation strategies the site presents.

Danzico, Liz. Bobulate (2003). Design>Web Design>User Interface>DHTML

The Art of User Interface Prototyping

It takes a certain craft to know how and when to build prototypes of web designs or software designs. This primer of prototyping explains when and how to build them.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (2000). Design>User Interface>Usability

Attractive Things Work Better  

Until recently, emotion was an ill-explored part of human psychology. Some people thought it an evolutionary left-over from our animal origins. Most thought of emotions as a problem to be overcome by rational, logical thinking. And most of the research focused upon negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anger. Modern work has completely reversed this view.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2003). Design>User Interface>User Experience>Emotions

An Audience of One: Creating Products for Very Small Workgroups

As creators of digital user experiences, we must transform complex workflows and tasks into useful applications. Experts have written much about the UX design process as it applies to broad audiences, industry-specific vertical markets, and large corporate user groups. However, as our evolving information economy continues to encourage greater and greater specialization of job roles, there is an increased need for customized applications--digital systems that only a select few people will ever use.

Follett, Jonathan. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Interface>Collaboration

Barras de Mosaicos

Las barras de mosaico (TileBars) son una técnica de visualización de búsquedas en documentos que permiten hacerse una idea más clara de lo que nos devuelve un buscador, añadiendo la serendipia (descubrimiento accidental) al concepto de relevancia.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction

Beating the Rap on User Interface Standards  

When your manager asked (told) you to write a user interface (UI) design standard, was it a no-win proposition? Apparently many developers feel that way.

Schaffer, Eric M. Human Factors International (1996). Design>Web Design>User Interface

Best Practices and Future Visions for Search User Interfaces: Position Paper  

The author argues that progress in search requires vigorous inquiry into how search can be embedded into application environments such as those for decision-making, personal information collecting, and designing.

Hendry, David G. Earthlink (2003). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Search

The Big Dig: Mining Nuggets of Value  

It is difficult to apply the lessons learned from e-commerce search interfaces to more complex ones, such as those for libraries or technical material. This article provides a guide to tailoring search interfaces to users with a persona-based approach.

McDaniel, Scott M. User Experience (2002). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Search

Branding and the User Interface, Part 2: Tips on New Media Branding: Behavior and Color

A look at how branding differs between traditional applications, like printed corporate collateral, and emerging new media applications, such as software user interfaces, with a focus on behavior and color.

Fortin, Nate. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>User Interface>User Centered Design

Building a Better Launchpad: A Case Study in Helping Users to Complete a Complex Task  

A launchpad is a graphical user interface used for tasks that have too many steps or are too complex to fit into a single wizard. The launchpad acts as a central access point for launching a series of related wizards or dialogs, each of which completes one step of the overall task. Our launchpad design further aids novice users by providing a graphical and interactive preview of the steps required to complete the overall task, such as installing or configuring a component. This paper focuses on the process used to create the IBM Launchpad. The paper briefly describes the final design of the launchpad and concludes with process recommendations based on our experiences.

Pupons Wickham, Daina. STC Proceedings (2001). Design>User Centered Design>User Interface

Building a User-Defined Interface

A measurably easy-to-use interface has been built using a novel technique. Novices attempted an electronic mail task using a command-line interface containing no help, no menus, no documentation, and no instruction. A hidden operator intercepted commands when necessary, creating the illusion of a true interactive session. The software was repeatedly revised to recognize users' new commands; in essence, the users defined the interface. This procedure was used on 67 subjects. The first version of the software could recognize only 7% of all the subjects' spontaneously generated commands; the final version could recognize 76% of those commands. This experience contradicts the idea that people are not good at designing their own command languages. Through careful observation and analysis of user behavior, a mail interface unusable by novices evolved into one that let novices do useful work within minutes.

Wixon, Dennis, John Whiteside, Michael Good and Sandra Jones. ACM SIGCHI (1983). Design>User Centered Design>User Interface

Building the Front End: Craft Intelligent and Intuitive Front Ends for Ajax Applications

With Ajax still one of the industry's hottest buzzwords, more and more applications are being built with Ajax technologies. However, it's not always easy to build a good application. This article focuses on how to build intuitive, easy-to-use Ajax-driven applications.

McLaughlin, Brett D. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Ajax

The Bull's-Eye: A Framework for Web Application User Interface Design Guidelines

A multi-leveled framework for user interface design guidelines of Web applications is presented. User interface design guidelines tend to provide information that is either too general, so that it is difficult to apply to a specific case, or too specific, so that a wide range of products is not supported. The framework presented is unique in that it provides a bridge between the two extremes. It has been dubbed the "Bull's-Eye' due to its five layers, represented as concentric circles. The center of the Bull's-Eye is the Component layer, followed by Page Templates, Page Flows, Interface Models and Patterns, and Overarching Features and Principles. To support this approach,requirements were gathered from user interface designers,product managers, UI developers, and product developers. Also, usability testing of the guidelines occurred on several levels, from broad guideline tests to more specific product tests. The guidelines and lessons learned are intended to serve as examples for others seeking to design families of Web applications or Web sites.

Beier, Betsy and Misha W. Vaughan. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Interface

Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!

You know all that copy that goes around your forms and in your confirmation e-mails? Who’s writing it? Derek Powazek explains why it’s important for user-interface designers to sharpen up their writing skills.

Powazek, Derek. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Writing

Can Programmers Do Interaction Design?

In most of the organizations we encounter during our consulting work, programmers tend to think they’re the best-qualified people to design the form and behavior of a product. In the absence of trained interaction designers, they may be right. They know from experience that no one else is going to think through all the implications of serving up that snippet of data in just the right way, and no one else questions the idea of programmers doing the interaction design because they assume it’s a technology problem. As a result, executives who lead technology initiatives believe that they already get interaction design for free from their programmers. In their opinion, having interaction designers is unnecessary; if the product happens to be hard to use, they assume the programmers just need some sensitivity training. Having programmers design the product is anything but free, though; it's ineffective, inefficient, and risky.

Goodwin, Kim. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Design>User Interface>Interaction Design