UI Design
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Hi All, I'm having problems with the General Discussions forum (mailed Chris), so I'll drag my soapbox out here. Does anyone know what the underlying products are that are used by SAP and/or Lotus Notes for their user interfaces? I ask because I am very interested in UI design, but rarely see discussion of this, and there are some nice things going on with the UI of SAP and Notes. Are there any professionals out there :rose: who are interested in this? I have the budget for a 'makeover' for my product - www.sysgem.com has pictures somewhere. I have never seen the *really* professional solutions that the big companies use, and I have search for high-quality UI toolkits irrespective of price, and haven't found anything. I get the impression that this is all in-house work. I am aware of the Dundas and other similar offerings. TIA, Simon
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Hi All, I'm having problems with the General Discussions forum (mailed Chris), so I'll drag my soapbox out here. Does anyone know what the underlying products are that are used by SAP and/or Lotus Notes for their user interfaces? I ask because I am very interested in UI design, but rarely see discussion of this, and there are some nice things going on with the UI of SAP and Notes. Are there any professionals out there :rose: who are interested in this? I have the budget for a 'makeover' for my product - www.sysgem.com has pictures somewhere. I have never seen the *really* professional solutions that the big companies use, and I have search for high-quality UI toolkits irrespective of price, and haven't found anything. I get the impression that this is all in-house work. I am aware of the Dundas and other similar offerings. TIA, Simon
I'm certain that Lotus Notes UI has been developed in house. Talking of UI issues I've noticed there are few applications out there showing of some really cool user interfaces. Check www.spidersoft.com and www.stardock.com for some skinned UIs. Also which aspects of the UI are you interested in,eg. Dialogs, widgets etc. The really cool way to develop a UI is to emulate the best features of other applications, eg Word, Notes, Visual Studio. There's also a couple of books on User interface design, Microsoft have produced two - both on MSDN and there's a book by Alan Cooper called "About Face". If there are any books I have missed - please let me know.
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I'm certain that Lotus Notes UI has been developed in house. Talking of UI issues I've noticed there are few applications out there showing of some really cool user interfaces. Check www.spidersoft.com and www.stardock.com for some skinned UIs. Also which aspects of the UI are you interested in,eg. Dialogs, widgets etc. The really cool way to develop a UI is to emulate the best features of other applications, eg Word, Notes, Visual Studio. There's also a couple of books on User interface design, Microsoft have produced two - both on MSDN and there's a book by Alan Cooper called "About Face". If there are any books I have missed - please let me know.
Hi Norm, 1st - thanks for the feedback. What I'm thinking of is a UI one level (or more) better than the standard Microsoft Word / Visual Studio UIs, hence my reference to Notes and SAP, which are two of the many products we support here. It's always the cleanliness of the UI, displaying loads of data in a clean and (essential) non-technical way. One problem we programmers have is that we think technically, whereas our end-users usually don't (think technically). (Whoever writes the Notes UI just isn't paid enough.) Whereas there are toolkits from Dundas, Stingray etc., Notes leaves this a long way behind in my opinion. I was just wondering whether this could be purchased somewhere, seems like I'll just have to buy Lotus instead. :-D
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Hi All, I'm having problems with the General Discussions forum (mailed Chris), so I'll drag my soapbox out here. Does anyone know what the underlying products are that are used by SAP and/or Lotus Notes for their user interfaces? I ask because I am very interested in UI design, but rarely see discussion of this, and there are some nice things going on with the UI of SAP and Notes. Are there any professionals out there :rose: who are interested in this? I have the budget for a 'makeover' for my product - www.sysgem.com has pictures somewhere. I have never seen the *really* professional solutions that the big companies use, and I have search for high-quality UI toolkits irrespective of price, and haven't found anything. I get the impression that this is all in-house work. I am aware of the Dundas and other similar offerings. TIA, Simon
Wow - I'm amazed that anyone would look to Lotus Notes as an example of good UI design. Perhaps they've competely rewritten it since v 4. Anyone interested in UI design MUST spend time at this site - it's hilarious and informative: http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm (The Interface Hall of Shame). See especially the section on Notes. Good books that I've seen are Coopers, and also "The Design of Everyday Things". Note that it is quite possible to put togetehr a stellar UI without a special library; the MFC/Windows basic offerings are a good place to start. To think that simply adding flashy graphics to a UI is the way to get a quality UI is a mistake commonly made by marketers and naive engineers.. the key to designing a good UI is understanding the way the user will interact with the product, and designing the UI in such a way as to not interfere with that.
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Hi All, I'm having problems with the General Discussions forum (mailed Chris), so I'll drag my soapbox out here. Does anyone know what the underlying products are that are used by SAP and/or Lotus Notes for their user interfaces? I ask because I am very interested in UI design, but rarely see discussion of this, and there are some nice things going on with the UI of SAP and Notes. Are there any professionals out there :rose: who are interested in this? I have the budget for a 'makeover' for my product - www.sysgem.com has pictures somewhere. I have never seen the *really* professional solutions that the big companies use, and I have search for high-quality UI toolkits irrespective of price, and haven't found anything. I get the impression that this is all in-house work. I am aware of the Dundas and other similar offerings. TIA, Simon
I've been using notes for sometime, which includes lots of internal works, most of their UI is from www.iris.com, developed exclusively for lotus notes(I think they did only for lotus notes). RayOzzi was part of Iris i think (the man behind www.groove.com .. it has a good UI ... all based on skinnable XML stuff .. sheeez they even have a Groove SDK).. I was pretty much impressed after seeing the lotus notes UI, though its not windows standard stuff(the reason is they need to have a common codebase across multiple platforms .. so u get the same look n feel - its my guess) i was amazed how much customization has been done( or is it like nothing standard everything customized) Sorry, I do not know any UI design toolkits like what you are asking for, I think it would have to be developed internal and it wouldnt be allowed outside to preserve originality just like lotus notes). cheers Kannan
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Wow - I'm amazed that anyone would look to Lotus Notes as an example of good UI design. Perhaps they've competely rewritten it since v 4. Anyone interested in UI design MUST spend time at this site - it's hilarious and informative: http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm (The Interface Hall of Shame). See especially the section on Notes. Good books that I've seen are Coopers, and also "The Design of Everyday Things". Note that it is quite possible to put togetehr a stellar UI without a special library; the MFC/Windows basic offerings are a good place to start. To think that simply adding flashy graphics to a UI is the way to get a quality UI is a mistake commonly made by marketers and naive engineers.. the key to designing a good UI is understanding the way the user will interact with the product, and designing the UI in such a way as to not interfere with that.
Well said Jim! Simon: Alan Cooper has a couple of books that may be a good "non-technical" way to assist your design decisions. "The Essentials of User Interface Design" and "The Inmates are Running the Asylum". Microsoft Press has a couple but the only one I see in front of me is "Windows User Experience" which tries to instill some standards, which of course goes against a lot of what Mr. Cooper tries to encourage. Well that's not entirely true, Mr. Cooper just doesn't like the dumb standards that don't fit well with the 'user-first' formula. Another good read is "Developing User Interfaces for Windows". Happy Reading and let me know if you need an Interface Engineer :rolleyes: Byron
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Wow - I'm amazed that anyone would look to Lotus Notes as an example of good UI design. Perhaps they've competely rewritten it since v 4. Anyone interested in UI design MUST spend time at this site - it's hilarious and informative: http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm (The Interface Hall of Shame). See especially the section on Notes. Good books that I've seen are Coopers, and also "The Design of Everyday Things". Note that it is quite possible to put togetehr a stellar UI without a special library; the MFC/Windows basic offerings are a good place to start. To think that simply adding flashy graphics to a UI is the way to get a quality UI is a mistake commonly made by marketers and naive engineers.. the key to designing a good UI is understanding the way the user will interact with the product, and designing the UI in such a way as to not interfere with that.
Your recommendation for www.iarchitech.com/mshame.htm was very informative!:) Thanks! Scott! Put the big rocks in the glass jar first!
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I'm certain that Lotus Notes UI has been developed in house. Talking of UI issues I've noticed there are few applications out there showing of some really cool user interfaces. Check www.spidersoft.com and www.stardock.com for some skinned UIs. Also which aspects of the UI are you interested in,eg. Dialogs, widgets etc. The really cool way to develop a UI is to emulate the best features of other applications, eg Word, Notes, Visual Studio. There's also a couple of books on User interface design, Microsoft have produced two - both on MSDN and there's a book by Alan Cooper called "About Face". If there are any books I have missed - please let me know.
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Hi Norm, 1st - thanks for the feedback. What I'm thinking of is a UI one level (or more) better than the standard Microsoft Word / Visual Studio UIs, hence my reference to Notes and SAP, which are two of the many products we support here. It's always the cleanliness of the UI, displaying loads of data in a clean and (essential) non-technical way. One problem we programmers have is that we think technically, whereas our end-users usually don't (think technically). (Whoever writes the Notes UI just isn't paid enough.) Whereas there are toolkits from Dundas, Stingray etc., Notes leaves this a long way behind in my opinion. I was just wondering whether this could be purchased somewhere, seems like I'll just have to buy Lotus instead. :-D
Actually, Lotus has recieved quite a lot of flack over their UI. The people at The Interface Hall of Shame have given it many many awards for it's inconsistency. In fact, they've devoted an entire section to Lotus.
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Hi All, I'm having problems with the General Discussions forum (mailed Chris), so I'll drag my soapbox out here. Does anyone know what the underlying products are that are used by SAP and/or Lotus Notes for their user interfaces? I ask because I am very interested in UI design, but rarely see discussion of this, and there are some nice things going on with the UI of SAP and Notes. Are there any professionals out there :rose: who are interested in this? I have the budget for a 'makeover' for my product - www.sysgem.com has pictures somewhere. I have never seen the *really* professional solutions that the big companies use, and I have search for high-quality UI toolkits irrespective of price, and haven't found anything. I get the impression that this is all in-house work. I am aware of the Dundas and other similar offerings. TIA, Simon
With UI programming, a bad standard is better than no standard at all. All windows programmers should strive to emulate the basic look and feel of most MS applications, unless there is a compelling reason not to do so. They should not do so because it is a "good" example of UI design, but simply because it is standard and something that the typical windows user is used to looking at and interacting with. Programmers should resist the urge to create glitzy interfaces simply because they have the power to do so, or to be different simply for the sake of being different. Keep it simple and keep it standard. (I know, MS itself breaks these rules, but that does not mean that everyone else does.) The maddest I have ever seen a customer base was when my former company "simplified" its interface for version 2.0 of the product. Was 2.0 a better interface than 1.0? Sure it was. But the customers, after successfully struggling to figure out the POS 1.0 UI, really did not want to learn a new one even if it was more simple, and, they wanted to know, why didn't we take the time to do the simple interface first? All very legitimate reactions - we screwed up.
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Actually, Lotus has recieved quite a lot of flack over their UI. The people at The Interface Hall of Shame have given it many many awards for it's inconsistency. In fact, they've devoted an entire section to Lotus.
Maybe, but I like it a lot - for the inexperienced user I find it very good, and more obvious than a 'standard' Windows UI :rose: . I haven't fully read all the articles in the Hall of Shame (I only found out about it a few hours ago), once I have I'll comment further. I know that I couldn't do better with bog-standard Windows and a few Dundas / Stingray enhancements ;-) Thanks for the feedback, Simon :suss:
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Hi All, I'm having problems with the General Discussions forum (mailed Chris), so I'll drag my soapbox out here. Does anyone know what the underlying products are that are used by SAP and/or Lotus Notes for their user interfaces? I ask because I am very interested in UI design, but rarely see discussion of this, and there are some nice things going on with the UI of SAP and Notes. Are there any professionals out there :rose: who are interested in this? I have the budget for a 'makeover' for my product - www.sysgem.com has pictures somewhere. I have never seen the *really* professional solutions that the big companies use, and I have search for high-quality UI toolkits irrespective of price, and haven't found anything. I get the impression that this is all in-house work. I am aware of the Dundas and other similar offerings. TIA, Simon
I read most of the replies, and I agree with some of them - the *vast* majority of users don't want something that doesn't look like Windows. The idea behind the Windows GUI is that if you learn one application, you pretty much have learned them all as far as basic functionality is concerned. At the same time, I find it rather humorous that managers make up reasons to use a particular UI style. I recently observed someone shoe-horn in the outlook style interface into a program that really didn't benefit from it. He did it because "it looked cool". He also has a CListCtrl with one row of editable cells, and one row of combo box cells, but there's no outward indication that these cells are special in any way. My advice is to stick to the normal Windows GUI unless what you're doing is VERY intuitive. Also, if the program you're working on is an update to an existing product... 1) Don't delete any existing features 2) Don't change the existing accelerator key assignments 3) Don't add new features that are outside the intended scope of the program. Your existing users are just as important as your new users, so keep them in mind as you decide on new features.
