Review: A Review of the Balsamiq Mockups wireframing application

This is a review for Balsamiq Mockups. This is a reasonably-priced application for creating wireframes that is easy to learn and use suitable for smaller projects. Creating interactive prototypes out of Balsamiq wireframes is now possible with the release of another application called Napkee. This review talks talks about: Balsamiq Mockup specifications; Balsamiq’s distinct visual character and how it work both in favor and against Balsamiq being adopted by users; Pros and cons of the application; and a conclusion with a recommendation on who should use and what to use Balsamiq Mockups for.

Rautela, Abhay. Cone Trees (2009). Articles>Reviews>Software>User Interface

Enhancing User Interaction With First Person User Interface

First person user interfaces can be a good fit for applications that allow people to navigate the real world, “augment” their immediate surroundings with relevant information, and interact with objects or people directly around them.

Wroblewski, Luke. Smashing (2009). Articles>User Interface>Usability>3D

Powers of 10: Time Scales in User Experience

From 0.1 seconds to 10 years or more, user interface design has many different timeframes, and each has its own particular usability issues.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Usability>User Experience>User Interface

Bringing Gaming to the Disabled

To a huge number of gamers and would-be gamers, though, even the most sensible and well-laid-out controller scheme is unplayable. For them, accessibility and interface issues make gaming at best an incomplete experience and at worst a total impossibility.

Hartford Courant (2009). Articles>Accessibility>User Interface>Games

Minimizing Complexity In User Interfaces

Clean. Easy to use. User-friendly. Intuitive. This mantra is proclaimed by many but often gets lost in translation. The culprit: complexity. How one deals with complexity can make or break an application. A complex interface can disorient the user in a mild case and completely alienate them in an extreme case. But if you take measures first to reduce actual complexity and then to minimize perceived complexity, the user will be rewarded with a gratifying experience.

Tate, Tyler. Smashing (2009). Design>User Interface>Minimalism

Preferences Considered Harmful

Every programmer and user interface designer eventually comes to this point: You can’t decide how a specific part of your user interface should behave. It’s easy, of course. Just make it a preference, and everyone will be happy.

Mathis, Lukas. ignore the code (2008). Articles>User Interface>Usability>User Experience

Touchscreen Usability

Touchscreen devices can only work well if both hardware and software are uniquely optimized for touch interaction. Simply adding touch interaction to an existing device will make the user experience worse instead of better.

ignore the code (2009). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction

Treating User Myopia

Fortunately, you don't see dialogs in web apps much, but this sort of modal dialog lunacy is, sadly, becoming more popular in today's AJAX-y world of web 2.5. Those who can't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, I guess.

Atwood, Jeff. Coding Horror (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Usability

Teaching Users to Read

This may sound a little harsh, but you'll see, when you do usability tests, that there are quite a few users who simply do not read words that you put on the screen. If you pop up an error box of any sort, they simply will not read it.

Atwood, Jeff. Coding Horror (2004). Articles>User Interface>User Centered Design>Usability

The Consistency Conundrum

A common mandate at many software companies is “Make our products consistent!” I’ve heard this clarion call for consistency at every company I’ve worked for that has more than a single product or service. The rationale behind the consistency mandate is that it will reduce design and development costs, improve the overall quality of the software, strengthen the brand (“the products should all look like they come from the same company”), make learning easier for users, and reduce errors when multiple products are used together. These are all great goals, but there is a problem with the consistency mandate – consistency is complex, multi-dimensional, and sometimes at odds with other important goals like usability.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Articles>User Interface>Usability

The Road to XAML

XAML stands for eXtensible Application Markup Language and was created by Microsoft. It is currently the primary mechanism for declaratively creating the user interface in a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application. WPF is part of the .NET 3.0 framework. Why discuss these very technical things in a design blog post? The answer is simple: because XAML is designed for designers. It has other uses of course, but one of its main tenets is that XAML enables the separation of UI and logic (code). That is a very powerful concept! In this and future posts, I will explain how a few of us at Autodesk are using XAML in our design process as a way to enable design refinement during the Development phase.

Stein, Matt. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Articles>User Interface>Programming>XML

The Ever-Evolving Arrow: Universal Control Symbol

The arrow and its brethren are everywhere on our computer screens. For example, a quick examination of the Firefox 3.0 browser, shown in Figure 1 in its standard configuration, yields eight examples of arrows—Forward, Back, and Reload buttons, scroll bar controls, and drop-down menus that reveal search engine, history, and bookmark choices.

Follett, Jonathan. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Graphic Design

Take a Breath Already!

One very important concept in any area of design, including interface design, is that of space. What is space? Well, obviously we aren’t talking about needing any kind of extended astronomical knowledge; space is the area with which we choose to do things. Today we will talk about this area in many different ways.

Cutrell, Jonathan. Fuel Your Interface (2009). Articles>User Interface>Document Design>User Centered Design

The Man Behind Clippy

Clippy's behavior bugged me, but I was so taken with his facial expressions that I always kind of felt bad sending him away. Anyway, Clippy took a back seat in later versions of Microsoft Office, so I hadn't thought about him in a while, when STC Secretary Erin Lowe off-handedly mentioned that she actually knew the man who invented Clippy. I was very excited to hear this, and Erin graciously agreed to arrange a meeting so that I could talk to Clippy's inventor about the creative process behind designing a user experience like Clippy.

Dickson, Andrea with Erin Lowe. STC Puget Sound (2007). Articles>Interviews>Human Computer Interaction>User Interface

How Dropdown Hotspots Can Make Online Help Topics Less Intimidating to Users

After some deliberation, the thought came to me to try two levels of dropdown hotspots. This screen is divided in sections, so I rearranged the information so that I had a hotspot corresponding to each section. Each hotspot would expose another set of hotspots and any other information about that section in general. This would allow the user to navigate directly to what they want rather than having to scan and scroll through a bunch of text.

Minson, Benjamin. Gryphon Mountain (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Interface>Help

UX Design vs UI Development

One of the more interesting tensions I have observed since getting into User Experience (UX) design about five years ago is the almost sibling-rivalry-like tension between UX designers and User Interface (UI) developers. At the heart of the tension is that most UI developers consider themselves (rightfully so) to be UI designers. The coding part is like Picasso having to understand how to mix paint; it's not the value-add, just the mechanics of delivering the creative concepts.

Hughes, Michael A. Humane Experience, The (2010). Articles>User Experience>User Interface

Great Tips About Using Flags, Colors and Flowers in User Interface (for Applications and Websites)

Often we you are creating and designing user interfaces for your apps or websites you face challenges like how to convey specific language or nation. You might consider using different flags, maps, colors, symbols as a part of your user interface. But that can be challenging and even very dangerous.

UX Passion (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Interface

Designing and Selecting Components for UIs

I have to think much harder when I design rich interfaces than when I work on standard Web applicaitons. With the increased flexibility and more components comes a higher risk of making silly mistakes. If I use a component inappropriately, users can't figure out what to do, even though the components may look cool.

Spencer, Donna. UX Magazine (2010). Articles>User Interface>Programming>User Experience

Hit The Blue Up

How do you put a device that sophisticated in the hands of so many people without bringing the company to a crawl or opening a small university to train everyone? Make the interface dead simple.

Mann, Howard. UX Magazine (2007). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Minimalism

Video Game Accessibility

I normally focus on web site accessibility, but after one of my favorite video games of 2009 recently won an award for its consideration to disabled players, it got me thinking about the subject.

Art of Web Accessibility, The (2010). Articles>Accessibility>User Interface>Games

User Assistance For Applications

No matter how well you design your User Interface, there will be times when your user would need assistance. User Assistance Model forms an integral part of Information Architecture for any application. The assistance includes print documentation, embedded help and online help.

Rajesh, Jha. SlideShare (2007). Presentations>Documentation>User Interface>Help

Usability Evaluation of High-Level User Assistance for Robot Mission Specification  

MissionLab is a mission specification system that implements a hybrid deliberative and reactive control architecture for autonomous mobile robots. The user creates and executes the robot mission plans through its graphical user interface. As robot deployments become more common in highly stressful situations, such as in dealing with explosives or biohazards, the usability of their mission specification system becomes critical. To address this need, a mission-planning “wizard” has been recently integrated into MissionLab. By retrieving and adapting past successful mission plans stored in its database, this new feature is designed to simplify the user’s planning process. The latest formal usability experiments, reported in this paper, testing for usability improvements in terms of speed of the mission planning process, accuracy of the produced mission plans, and ease of use is conducted. This paper introduces the mission-planning wizard, describes the usability experiments (including design), and discusses the results in detail.

Endo, Yoichiro, Douglas C. MacKenzie and Ronald C. Arkin. Georgia Institute of Technology (2002). Articles>User Interface>Usability

Simulating Hardware

Software products are easy to demonstrate to clients – the products can be carried around or accessed electronically. But what about hardware products? My product is a security panel for homes. It is a physical product that is difficult to carry around and show to prospective clients. My idea was turning this piece of hardware into a software simulation that would help users get a feel of the product, albeit electronically.

Virupaksha, K.M. Indus (2009). Articles>User Interface>Online>3D

Экспертная оценка интерфейсов

Почему я говорю на эту тему: Штук 15 объявленных проектов, ещё штук 30 необъявленных; 50% в той или иной степени проблемных; Видел довольно много чужих неудачных отчетов. Урок получен без удовольствия.

Golovach, Vlad V. SlideShare (2009). (Russian) Presentations>Usability>User Interface

The Future of User Interfaces

User interfaces—the way we interact with our technologies—have evolved a lot over the years. But there’s still a long way to go and there are many possible directions that future interface designs could take. We’re already seeing some start to crop up and its exciting to think about how they’ll change our lives.

Chapman, Cameron. Six Revisions (2010). Articles>User Interface>Planning>User Experience