#34097
Including Recommendations in User Interfaces to Enhance Motivation
Motivation is an important factor in any kind of online interaction or transaction. People need a little encouragement when they’re not really convinced they should take any action or are uncertain about what action to take next. As users perform tasks online, they need to understand what’s happening and expect you to help them move forward. This article discusses the responsibility of a user interface to provide recommendations along a user’s path of interaction.
Kirmani, Afshan. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Interface>Help>User Experience
#34171
On User Interface Design, Part I
The first of a pair of presentations by Alan Kay (of Smalltalk fame). The presentation is from 1983 and discusses the development of user interface design from the 1960s onward.
Kay, Alan. Visual Literacy (1983). Articles>User Interface>History>Podcasts
#34172
On User Interface Design, Part II
The second of a pair of presentations by Alan Kay (of Smalltalk fame). The presentation is from 1983 and discusses the development of user interface design from the 1960s onward.
Kay, Alan. University of California Berkeley (1983). Articles>User Interface>History>Podcasts
#34320
Operating System Interface Design Between 1981-2009
Over the years a range of GUI’s have been developed for different operating systems such as OS/2, Macintosh, Windowsamiga, Linux, Symbian OS, and more. We’ll be taking a look at the evolution of the interface designs of the major operating systems since the 80’s.
Webdesigner Depot (2009). Articles>User Interface>Operating Systems>History
#34321
Seven Interface Design Techniques to Simplify and De-Clutter Your Interfaces
What is simplicity? Simplicity is the quality of being natural, plain and easy to understand. It is not surprising then that simplicity is often thrived for in user interface design. Most people naturally dislike complexity in devices and software. Yes, some people find joy in figuring out how something works, but for most of us, being unable to operate a device leads to wasted time and frustration, and that’s not a good thing. If you can take a complex device or a piece of software and somehow rearrange, reorganize and redesign the interface to make it easy to use and understand, then you’re well on the way to delivering a better user experience. In this article I’m going to talk about 7 practical techniques that you can utilize in web design to make your websites or web applications simpler and less cluttered.
Webdesigner Depot (2009). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Minimalism
#34408
Using Verbs As Nouns in User Interfaces
To better manage interactions with such large datasets, we’ve incorporated the concept of views, in the same way that Microsoft Outlook and SQL Builder use them. However, my initial usability testing has found that the concept of views is escaping most people, and I think it often boils down to the term itself. Even if I show users what the software does—and they pretty much always like it when they see it—they still often cannot get over the initial hurdle of the naming convention.
Six, Janet M. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Experience>Diction>User Interface
#34428
Refreshable Braille and the Web
Many people have not had the opportunity to see someone use a refreshable Braille device to access the web. I recently videoed Bruce Maguire describing how he uses the Internet with a refreshable Braille display. He also demonstrates finding a book on the Amazon site. Transcript of the video is at the end of this document.
Hudson, Roger. DingoAccess (2009). Articles>Accessibility>User Interface>Podcasts
#34446
How to Improve the UI--Really!
A colleague has made me realize that user assistance writers are codependents of bad UI design. Because we explain how the UI really works, we somehow leave our developers and companies feeling like they're "covered" when the users have a bad experience.
Hughes, Michael A. User Assistance (2009). Articles>User Interface>Documentation>Technical Writing
#34514
Usability Tips for Your Application (Part I)
There are a exponentially growing amount of applications being developed. Some of them vanish at an early stage, while others grow to be quite (and sometimes extremely) popular. What really dazzles me is how sucky many of them (both the popular and the unpopular ones) are regarding how they deal with user-interaction.
Odden, Michael. Unlimited Edition (2009). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Interaction Design
#34539
Top-Ten Information Architecture (IA) Mistakes
Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>User Interface
#34546
What Makes a Good Mobile Interface?
While the perfect mobile user interface is beast that doesn't exist, there are good interfaces that work around any issues there are with the displays on mobile devices.
Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>User Interface>Wireless Web>Mobile
#34563
Great Designs Should Be Experienced and Not Seen
When things are going well in a design, we don't pay attention to them. We only pay attention to things that bother us. The same is true with online designs. We attend to things that aren't working far more than we attend to things that are. When the online experience frustrates us, we pay attention to its details, often because we're trying to figure out some way to outsmart it.
Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>User Interface
#34645
As a rule of thumb, the earlier in the development process reuse can occur, the more efficient reuse becomes. Like software component reuse, the reuse of UX design elements can be a very efficient form of reuse—particularly because this form of reuse occurs very early in the product development cycle. The ability to reuse prior work effectively is one characteristic of a mature discipline.
Hornsby, Peter. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Project Management>User Interface>Planning
#34751
Using Wikis to Document UI Specifications
As Agile gains momentum as a development approach of choice, documenting design becomes a challenge. Peter Gremett shows how using a wiki to capture your design is a great way to be adaptive as you build and deliver product to customers.
Gremett, Peter. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>User Interface>Agile>Wikis
#34871
Never, ever, ever let systems-level engineers do human interaction design unless they have displayed a proven secondary talent in that area.
Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2004). Articles>User Interface>Case Studies
#34903
ウェブサイトは、その構造とナビゲーションシステムとが互いに支え合っていなければならない。検索システムとも結びついていなければならない。サブサイトに至るまで一体化していなければならない。複雑で、一貫性が無く、選択肢が隠れていて、UIが扱いにくければ、ユーザーは必要なものを見つけられない。
Nielsen, Jakob. Usability.gr.jp (2009). (Japanese) Articles>Web Design>Information Design>User Interface
#34935
Being "minimalist" and "streamlined" is not always most effective. Have you ever written yourself a quick, shorthand note, only to find later that you had no way to unpack your own great idea? Icons work similarly. They are pictures – meant to provide a visual shorthand to users moving through a task. While research indicates that icons are best when initially paired with text to increase recognition and learnability, users experienced with a given set of icons will begin to ignore the text, scanning for and acting from the image alone.
Michaels, Mary M. UI Design Newsletter (2007). Articles>Graphic Design>User Interface
#34950
Beware of Style in Icon Design!
The icons or baby faces used as part of user interface have now turned into a major aspect of product branding. With powerful computers, enhanced graphics capabilities, advanced tools for illustration, and professionals to advocate rich user experience, icon design has become more important and complex than ever before! Windows Vista has raised the standard of quality icons even higher. An interface design project forced me to think about ’style’ in icon design. It raised some basic questions in my mind.
Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2007). Design>User Interface>Graphic Design
#34969
Search Goal Redefinition Through User-System Interaction 
The purpose of this research is to examine search goal redefinition during users' interaction with information retrieval systems.
Hider, Philip M. Journal of Documentation (2007). Articles>Web Design>Search>User Interface
#35071
The Yahoo! User Interface Library
The YUI Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. YUI is available under a BSD license and is free for all uses.
#35092
Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product
A product is actually a service. Although the designer, manufacturer, distributer, and seller may think it is a product, to the buyer, it offers a valuable service. In reality a product is all about the experience.
Norman, Donald A. Interactions (2009). Articles>User Interface>User Experience>Usability
#35101
Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality
While ubiquitous computing remains an unpleasant mouthful of techno-babble to most people who know the term, and everyware is still an essentially unknown idea, the visibility of augmented reality has surged in the last twelve months.
Lamantia, Joe. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Interface>User Experience>Information Design
#35150
Engineering Software for Accessibility 
If a majority of your users could benefit from your product being accessible, doesn’t it just make sense to build an accessible product? If you have decided to do so, you are sending a message to your customers that their needs matter. Populations in many countries are getting older. Civil rights for people with disabilities are gradually being extended to encompass digital inclusion. Governments are requiring procurement officials to purchase products that are the most accessible (mandated in the U.S. by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act). For technology producers, creating accessible products is just the right thing to do, and it makes good business sense.
Grieves, Jason and Masahiko Kaneko. Microsoft (2009). Books>Accessibility>Programming>User Interface
#35173
Affordance allows us to look at something and intuitively understand how to interact with it. For example, when we see a small button next to a door, we know we should push it with a finger. Convention tells us it will make a sound, notifying the homeowner that someone is at the door. This concept transfers to the virtual environment: when we see a 3D-shaped button on a web page, we understand that we are supposed to “push” it with a mouse-click.
Link-Rodrigue, Margit. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Usability
#35179
User Interface Pattern Documentation Review
User interface (UI) patterns have the potential to make software development more efficient. The prospect of such efficiency gains has led to interest in user interface (UI) patterns by individuals and organizations looking for ways to increase quality while at the same time reducing the costs associated with software development.
Stapleton, Patrick. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>User Interface>Documentation>Functional Specifications
