Basic UI Design?: Placement, Appearance, Function
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was wondering is there was some kind of Basic ui design principle that someone might have written a blog that follows the line of Placement: where is control/component placed Appearance: how does component look. Font, size, color, word wrapping, ect... Function: what does component do. One thing, multiple things depending on situation. maybe something with different words?
Just like building a building... Form follows function. Lets say a user has to enter 12 pieces of data. That data comes to them from 3 sources. I would think that grouping the inputs according to source MIGHT make sense. I do not believe there is a one size fits all answer. Look at PowerPoint, Excel, and Word. Similar GUI interfaces, and radically different GUI Interfaces at the same time. Put a formula in a table in word. you can do it. Much hard than a formula in a cell in Excel. Here are some things to consider: 1) What the users want 2) Who the users are 3) Why does the software exist (Hint: to make someones life easier/better=>It's about people) 4) Is it clear what is expected 5) More people are Color Blind than you realize (like myself) 6) How often is it used? (a nice click sound is great on confirmation. But not on confirmation of something that I have to do 1,000 times a day, every day. Imagine a Whoot Whoot sound played on a McDonalds screen after every order is entered. Then imagine a busy lunch with 4 registers going at once) 7) Use it yourself, LIKE your user would 8) use it half way, walk away, come back (like you got interrupted), and figure out how to complete it. Finally, it is as much art as science. And it also depends on the Platform, and the device. Many things work fine on a PC screen, suck on a mobile screen, impossible on a DOS screen, horrible on a paper terminal (for those of us who have been through all of them).
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Agreed. But that doesn't mean that every application is free to do it whichever way the developer chooses: In many professional areas, there are established ways for how to do things across a number of competing alternatives. Sort of like a "GUI professional terminology" - if you want to change that terminology you should be fully aware of that and do it with a clear intent. My honest opinion is that one major reason why *nix failed on the desktop was that developers more or less completely ignored conventions and terminology, and made things the way the programmer thought would be some great idea, without ever asking professionals for their opinion (or if he did, ignoring their answers). Advanced users didn't feel at home; the application didn't "think" the way they did as professionals. So, take the freedom to listen to domain experts. Don't take the freedom not listening to domain experts.
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was wondering is there was some kind of Basic ui design principle that someone might have written a blog that follows the line of Placement: where is control/component placed Appearance: how does component look. Font, size, color, word wrapping, ect... Function: what does component do. One thing, multiple things depending on situation. maybe something with different words?
I haven't read all of the replies, so please forgive me if I'm repeating others. My one overarching general principle is, "maintain the context". There is nothing worse than being in the middle of a process and forgetting why you're there and what choices you've made. So, for left-to-right I keep the highlighted context queues on the left and the detail on the right. For right-to-left, the context is on the right. For top-to-bottom, the context is on the top. That kind of eye-flow, that parallels the natural way people read, helps keep the experience intuitive and minimizes user stress. Oh yeah! In my experience it doesn't happen very often these days, but use contrasting colors for text and background. There is nothing more aggravating than being unable read text that blends into the background like yellow on line green for example. Good luck to you!
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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I-net is full of such "UI guides", I don't know what a problem topic starter has. :) But looking at his questions (where to place controls) he is not even googled it.
Maybe he was asking for wisdom. Not just google matches. If you do not distinguish between wisdom and google hits, then you are like that capitalist who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. When I ask for advice from a person, I am asking for that person's experience, knowledge, judgements and wisdom. Not for his google hits.
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was wondering is there was some kind of Basic ui design principle that someone might have written a blog that follows the line of Placement: where is control/component placed Appearance: how does component look. Font, size, color, word wrapping, ect... Function: what does component do. One thing, multiple things depending on situation. maybe something with different words?
[User Interface Principles (Windows)](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff728831(v=vs.85).aspx)
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then". ― Blaise Pascal
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I disagree. I always (try to) present good (specific)answers on good (specific) questions. He never stated he googled and found answer x or y. He never stated what he figured out for himself. He never stated what technology, what OS, what platform (desktop vs web) he was targeting. I have nothing against the guy (or girl), but if you ask a general question you will get a general answer.
V.
(MQOTD rules and previous solutions)
I tend to believe that if you cannot post something helpful, remain silent. Flippant comments are of no assistance to anyone.
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Maybe he was asking for wisdom. Not just google matches. If you do not distinguish between wisdom and google hits, then you are like that capitalist who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. When I ask for advice from a person, I am asking for that person's experience, knowledge, judgements and wisdom. Not for his google hits.
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Then, whatever you do: Expect your UI design to be really bad, five years from now :-). I started out with the "Common User Access" specification in the 1980s (published by IBM but developed as a joint effort between IBM, MS and a few other companies). Windows 3 changed a number of the rules, Windows 9x even more, Win7 changed a number of things again, and then came the tile-based Win8, and ... Often, you must make a decision: You are quite certain that some new UI hype (like mouse gestures a few years back) is a fad that won't last, but today everybody demands support for it. You must choose between the modern (but maybe less functional) look, or a more conservative, tried out design that might look slightly outdated. What comes out of this is that if possible, you should pick up design guidelines from several UI generations, and pay attention to rules we do not push in the modern designs. Why where they forgotten? Maybe they should have been kept! Obviously, guidelines provided with justifications / rationale are worth their weight in gold. And if no justification / rationale is given, try to make it up, and ask yourself if you can defend it. I know of a number of rules that I cannot defend; they are just rules that someone stated. Unless someone in power demands that I honor the rule, I feel free to ignore the rule.
> You are quite certain that some new UI hype (like mouse gestures a few years back) is a fad that won't last, but today everybody demands support for it. Gestures have been around for more than a few years (I first came across them in the early-90s and I'm pretty sure they weren't new then), but the trick, as you say, is to spot what really is a blind alley, and what is going to remain useful and become a cornerstone of future design.
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was wondering is there was some kind of Basic ui design principle that someone might have written a blog that follows the line of Placement: where is control/component placed Appearance: how does component look. Font, size, color, word wrapping, ect... Function: what does component do. One thing, multiple things depending on situation. maybe something with different words?
See About Face - The Essentials of User Interface Design by Alan Cooper https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interface-Design/dp/1568843224 See also Balsamiq - a reasonably decent UI prototyping app at www.balsamiq.com
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I think way too often people forget that they can google it. I forget sometimes. When a question is very basic and has no context at all, I think "Did you google that?" is a perfectly reasonable response. I love the "let me google that for you" page. I started to ask, "Is that something you can find on the web?" But then I realized my question probably contained its own answer, so only answer if the answer is obscure.
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was wondering is there was some kind of Basic ui design principle that someone might have written a blog that follows the line of Placement: where is control/component placed Appearance: how does component look. Font, size, color, word wrapping, ect... Function: what does component do. One thing, multiple things depending on situation. maybe something with different words?
Years ago both Microsoft and IBM developed concepts for intuitive interfaces. However, it was Apple Corporation that made interface design into an art form. With the exception of Apple, developers in the Microsoft and IBM communities appeared to go their own ways as to how to best design an intuitive interface. I do not know about the IBM side of things but when everyone was demanding standards back in the 1990s Microsoft did attempt to satisfy this demand by promoting a number of standards for development of applications, including design concepts for the interface of graphical applications. Then suddenly the Microsoft Development Community turned on Microsoft making the claim that the company was now trying to dominate the industry. In any event, user interface design concepts were made available in a variety of ways. The links below will give you an idea as to what standards were being promoted and most likely are still quite relevant to today's development efforts... (an article on Apple design is the 3rd link) https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997506.aspx http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~matt/courses/cs563/talks/smartin/int_design.html https://developer.apple.com/design/tips/ To research this design area further enter the following search terms into your preferred search engine... common user interface design
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Wisdom?? :) LOL! So he is so lazy not even googling proper articles, but expects somebody will waste time on creating article? It's at least naive, at most it's stupid. It's too wide topic to ask in this place.
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Years ago both Microsoft and IBM developed concepts for intuitive interfaces. However, it was Apple Corporation that made interface design into an art form. With the exception of Apple, developers in the Microsoft and IBM communities appeared to go their own ways as to how to best design an intuitive interface. I do not know about the IBM side of things but when everyone was demanding standards back in the 1990s Microsoft did attempt to satisfy this demand by promoting a number of standards for development of applications, including design concepts for the interface of graphical applications. Then suddenly the Microsoft Development Community turned on Microsoft making the claim that the company was now trying to dominate the industry. In any event, user interface design concepts were made available in a variety of ways. The links below will give you an idea as to what standards were being promoted and most likely are still quite relevant to today's development efforts... (an article on Apple design is the 3rd link) https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997506.aspx http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~matt/courses/cs563/talks/smartin/int_design.html https://developer.apple.com/design/tips/ To research this design area further enter the following search terms into your preferred search engine... common user interface design
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
Curious to see if IBM's "Common User Access" is available online, I came across a historical version, dated 1989: CUA Basic Interface Design Guide[^], from the age of monospaced fonts, before screen dumps were commonplace so figures are either drawn by hand (drafters did have that steady hand! I am envious!) or drawn by a pen plotter. My printed version from the early 90s has real screen dumps(!) from both Windows, IBM and Motiv - even illustrations in color! I find in fascinating digging into the "historical" stuff, seeing what we have forgotten and thrown away, and asking why we abandoned it - maybe that was the right decison, maybe we should have kept it.