#13485
Teaching Technical People How to Think (About Graphical User Interface Design) 
Advances in technology have opened up new opportunities for technical communicators in the area of graphical user interface design. This paper describes our effort to take advantage of these opportunities. We have educated ourselves in the core issues of current research; we have leveraged our expertise in page layout and design; and we have participated in the development of standards for GUI design. Although progress has been slow, we are encouraged by early feedback from our management.
Janicko, Raymond P. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>User Interface>Instructional Design>Education
#13824
Research I recently conducted highlighted the high level of involvement technical communicators have in the design of user interfaces. Most technical communicators make some contribution, ranging from comments to developers if, from their perspective, something on the interface does not work, to actually designing the interface elements. This led me to propose a question for an idea market for IPCC 98 in Quebec. The question I asked participants was: How do you, as technical communicators, contribute to interface design? The question generated a lot of interest, with technical communicators sharing their experiences and providing many examples of what they do and how they contribute. Here is a summary of the points they raised.
Fisher, Julie L. TC-FORUM (1999). Design>User Interface
#21417
Ten Quotable Moments: Challenges and Responses for User Interface Designers
The following ten things have been said by actual clients and represent common and very human reactions to a new wrinkle in the process of building software: design. By gathering these comments in one place and sharing them widely, it becomes easier to recognize them, so we can keep our calm and contribute to effective software teams.
Krause, Brian R. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>User Interface>Usability
#29051
In visual querying, users analyze data for their decisions and problems by interacting with graphics that are dynamic and linked. This querying paradigm is new, a dramatic break from the more familiar retrieving of data via search statements and displaying of it in static charts and graphs. For this new visual querying paradigm, analysts conceptually and operationally need to master new approaches. To discover salient relationships, they need to manipulate displays. To drill down for detail or causes, they have to select data of interest directly from a graph. And to draw inferences, they have to consider meanings across several dynamically linked graphics. With the aim of studying users success in these new approaches, particularly focusing on the approach of directly selecting data from graphs, I conducted a scenario-based usability test with 10 data analysts. They interacted with visualizations to complete a realistic complex analysis evaluating employee performance. Test findings reveal a range of difficulties in visual selection that, at times, gave rise to inaccurate selections, invalid conclusions, and misguided decisions. To overcome these difficulties, support for visual selection needs to be built into interfaces and help. Results and recommended improvements are presented.
Mirel, Barbara E. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>User Interface>Usability>Visual Rhetoric
#20871
Website text should be clear, links should stand out, and all text should scale according to user preferences.
Baker, Adam. Merges.net (2001). Design>Web Design>User Interface>User Centered Design
#22010
La visualización de la estructura textual de un documento resulta de gran ayuda en su análisis y complementa técnicas como la lingüística computacional, al utilizar la capacidad de detección de patrones del cerebro humano.
Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2002). (Spanish) Design>Graphic Design>User Interface
#23113
It's worth remembering the downsides to centralized computing. We must take steps to keep users in control as we grow the power of the network. It's essential that we keep a strong front end to balance out improved back-end features.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>User Interface
#21872
This Is Broken: A Compilation of Bad Experiences
If you know a user experience that irritates you, don't just site there and grouse about it. Send it in to ThisIsBroken.com, a compilation of bad experiences: products, services, places, and Web designs that don't put the user first.
Hurst, Mark. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>User Interface
#30791
This Is What Happens When You Let Developers Create UI
If you let your developers create your UI, hilarity ensues.
Atwood, Jeff. Coding Horror (2006). Design>User Interface>Usability>User Centered Design
#24002
New technologies will introduce as many problems as they solve unless they are focused with good design.
Greenwood, Wayne. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>User Interface
#10629
Today's GUI - The 'WIMP' Interface 
The user interfaces of today are dominated by the so-called WIMP UI - Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers. While there is no denying the success of these interfaces in bringing desktop computing to millions of users across the world, the GUI has grown to be a cluttered, discordant world of clashing icons and wasted screen space. In the WIMP world, objects (or more usually, applications) are presented in rectangular windows. They do not look real, or even bear more than an occasional passing resemblance to anything in our real world outside the computer. And amongst the visual noise and clutter, are hidden the clues necessary to make the cognitive leap to accommodate a metaphor which relies on the idea that 'windows' can exist on a 'desktop.' Objects and applications alike are represented by icons. But these icons only show a gross level of information - they indicate the class of object, but rarely impart status information or make important properties apparent.
#24737
Tools and Programming Languages for Creating Interactive Prototypes
This the first in a series of articles exploring the ways practioners go about making effective prototypes. This article presents just one method - the use of HTML and JavaScript. Amanda has posted requests on several usability lists requesting information about different approaches, and would be keen to hear how you do it.
Nance, Amanda. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Design>User Interface>User Centered Design
#23853
Top 10 Decisions That Reduce Usability
Did you ever wonder why some products are well designed and easy to use and others are not? The answer is simple—decision makers and budget holders make decisions with little thought of how they reduce usability. Here then are the top ten decisions that reduce usability.
Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2004). Design>Usability>User Interface
#21418
Top Ten Nine Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks
Apple Sales is apparently in love with the Dock. You can't go into an Apple store without seeing it splayed across the bottom of the screen, in the very configuration least conducive to computing on a Macintosh. Why? Because it's sexy and it sells. Unfortunately, as a productivity device, it just doesn't work.
Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2004). Design>User Interface>Operating Systems>Macintosh
#31916
Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes
Application usability is enhanced when users know how to operate the UI and it guides them through the workflow. Violating common guidelines prevents both.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Usability
#19257
Towards a General Relation Browser: A GUI for Information Architects 
The paper presents the case of ongoing efforts to develop and test generalizable user interfaces that provide interactive overviews for large-scale Web sites, portals, and other partitions of Web space. The interfaces are called Relation Browsers (RB) because they help people explore the relationships across different attribute sets, thus enabling understanding the scope and extent of the corpus through active exploration of different 'slices' defined by different attribute value juxtapositions. The RB concept is illustrated through discussion of six iterations over a five year period that included laboratory usability studies, a field test, and implementations with a variety of data management problems. The current application to design concepts in a digital government setting is discussed, and the concept of the RB as the basis for an interface server is presented.
Marchionini, Gary and Ben Brunk. Journal of Digital Information (2003). Design>User Interface>Information Design
#11887
TradeOff Cube: A Graphical User Interface Device
Decision support systems for multicriteria problems aim to help users understand the tradeoffs between their priorities (i.e., criteria weights) and their impact on the leading alternatives. Assignment of weights in existing systems requires multiple interface screens, so does analysis of the relationship between criteria weights and outcomes. A single-screen user interface device is proposed - a tradeoff cube - for declaration and viewing of all criteria weights - even if the hierarchy is multi-level and for examining the relationships between criteria weights and performance of alternatives. The tradeoff cube displays the entire hierarchy in a single base square subdivided into rectangles, each of which corresponds to a criterion. Criteria weights are adjusted by modifying the area of the rectangle. Valuations of alternatives are dynamically displayed in an adjacent stack bar chart, where stacks represent the lowest level criteria nodes. The dynamic interactive fluid process dramatically speeds up visualiz
Kirshner, Michael. EServer (2001). Design>User Interface>Visual>Visual Rhetoric
#19119
TreeDec: an Annotation Tool to Support Website Navigation
Websites are often organized into logical hierarchies, or tree structures, in order to help users navigate. Ideally, users could view the entire tree, or jump to nearby pages. TreeDec (= Tree Decorator) is a system to support website authors and maintainers by providing automatic annotation of webpages under the control of a central file that represents the tree structure.
Cugini, John. NIST (2000). Design>User Interface>Information Design>Web Design
#21873
Trends Toward Greater Usability in Voting Technology
UPA's Voting and Usability project is tracking several important trends toward greater usability in voting technology across the globe: Verified voting, The NIST Voting Symposium, FEC Brochures, Voting Developments in the UK and in the Republic of Ireland.
Scott, Josephine. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Civic
#12972
A web magazine for interaction designers.
#26540
UI Design Cuts McAfee's Support Calls by 90%
When McAfee launched it's new ProtectionPilot software in the summer of 2004, the number of support calls they received was drastically less than expected and what is typical of a software launch. The article on softwareceo.com presents 23 tips attributed to McAfee's success with the ProtectionPilot launch.
IxDA Resource Library (2005). Design>User Interface>Case Studies
#29588
UI Design with Java and XML Toolkits
XML has revolutionized application UI design in recent years. With a cunning blend of XML and script languages such as JavaScript, rich, aesthetically pleasing applications can be quickly constructed with ease. We've looked at Widgets and XUL as two examples of this in the past and now, I'm going to take a look at some of the innovative Java UI toolkits that implement XML as an integral mechanism for application II design. Please note, this is the first part of a two-part article.
Wellman, Dan. Dev Articles (2006). Design>User Interface>Programming>XML
#23920
A collection of user interface elements, widgets, techniques, and patterns. Includes example screen shots of each technique, as well as descriptions of why you would use the technique, and when it is appropriate.
Tidwell, Jenifer. Time-Tripper (1997). Resources>User Interface
#25075
uiGarden is a bilingual on-line magazine that provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners who work in the user interface design (including user experience, information architecture, GUI, and usability) field in the Chinese and the English speaking worlds to publish their thinking and exchange views with each other.
#13075
UIML: An Appliance-Independent XML User Interface Language
Today’s Internet appliances feature user interface technologies almost unknown a few years ago: touch screens, styli, handwriting and voice recognition, speech synthesis, tiny screens, and more. This richness creates problems. First, different appliances use different languages: WML for cell phones; SpeechML, JSML, and VoxML for voice enabled devices such as phones; HTML and XUL for desktop computers, and so on. Thus, developers must maintain multiple source code families to deploy interfaces to one information system on multiple appliances.
Abrams, Marc, Constantinos Phanouriou, Alan L. Batongbacal, Stephen M. Williams and Jonathan E. Shuster. International WWW Conference, The (1999). Design>User Interface>Usability
