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Member since:

Please don't hesitate to let me know what you'd like to read about in a followup article. Off the top of my head, here are a few aspects about which I could write something at least vaguely competent:

- What methods are there to help software developers create usable interfaces? (That is, before user tests and all that, how do you come up with a good interface in the first place?)
- What, if not its simplicity, helped Apple's iPod to become the big success that it is?
- How did Microsoft come up with the Ribbon and what can other UX people learn from it?

To clarify, this isn't a vote for the most popular topic, I'm just trying to gauge if there's anything particular that's really interesting to you.

Reply Score: 2

ephracis Member since:

I think that error messages and text in all is an interesting part. Communication!

Error messages are of course lovely, since there's tons of examples of error messages that does not help the user at all. A good application should be able to handle problems in an elegant way.

Too much text is also a big problem, since users won't read it. So here's the thing: what is the best way to communicate with the user? The balance between images and text as well as using the users memory (familiarity).

Another interesting but somewhat subtle aspect of communication is the tone of it. Do you want to come off as mechanical and corporate or do you want to sound like what a friend would have sounded like if he was standing beside him and explaining the application?

The message "Your request contained an illegal action" is bad because it puts blame on the user (the word illegal is very loaded).

Anyway, there's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about when it comes to usability design. The Firefox journey is also interesting since it contains the original Mozilla browser, the whole Mozilla Suit, the creation of Firefox which became Firefox 3 and now Firefox 4 is present a new design yet again. It has been up and down several times. Which could be an interesting analysis.

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JulianFietkau Member since:

I've added error messages to my imaginary list. I suppose I could write at least half an article on that topic alone. Have you read Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface, by chance? I find some of his opinions a little eccentric, but he makes several very good points about error messages that I'll probably cite if/when I write an article about the topic.

And even though I personally use Firefox, I probably don't have enough experience with the history to write about it, or it would involve a ton of research beforehand. So don't count on me writing about that. ;)

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spiderman Member since:

That was a good article. Can't wait to read the followup.
I think accessibility is an interesting subject in UI design. Sometimes a UI design is simple for 90% of the people but extremely complicated for the rest. How to design a good UI that is simple and accessible for more people? Good color choices, separating content from presentation, using accessibility standards and methods, etc...

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JulianFietkau Member since:



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wannabe geek Member since:

I'd like you to comment on the topic of why there's a perceived dichotomy between the power and conceptual depth of the UI and its usability and coolness, and what could be done about it. I mean, why geeks love ugly UIs like the command-line and keyboard shortcuts, why most GUIs are so difficult to script and combine, why the mouse is associated with self-explanatory UIs and the keyboard evokes dauntingly obscure incantations; what are the key issues, is it interactivity vs batch processing, verbal representation vs graphical representation.. and what is so special about verbal representations in programming? Is it a good idea to make communication more graphical and graphics more "verbal"? Should our documents all look like bland defaults (boring) or should they be as unique as physical documents (confusing). Why are defaults so bland, and what if you want a specific bland look for your document which happens to be the default look? (what's the best way to deal with abstraction and escaping).

I have some vague ideas on what a dream UI would be like (maybe something between Croquet and Tangible Functional Programming), but I'm sure your views are much more interesting.

Reply Parent Score: 2

JulianFietkau Member since:






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