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UI designers exist for a good reason. Good ones understand their problem domain better than anyone else, and are best suited to make solutions for it.

Check out the Interface Hall of Shame. Windows-centric, but very good.

Not specific to the screenshot, but the print dialog is EXACTLY THE SAME AS WINDOWS'.

Surprise, they do the same thing, besides this Print dialog has some functions that the windows one doesn't (like hiding the lower half, filtering printers and doing HTML-Settings ('though I don't know what to find there)). Btw, which windows printing dialog do you mean? I know that there is a default, but I just tried 3 programs: Mozilla 0.9.9, Notepad and Word 2000. And each of them had a different printing dialog)

The taskbar system is EXACTLY THE SAME AS WINDOWS'.

Just 'cause the one who did the screenshot likes it that way. The default looks different and you get much more functionality.

Even the HELP SYSTEM is EXACTLY THE SAME AS WINDOWS'.

You mean "exactly the same" as in "using HTML to store & display linked documents"? Wow, quite invoative from Microsoft. Beside, again windows is not consistent (Word doesn't use the default-windows help system), whereas KDE is.

The background *is* the default Mac OS X background.

Granted, but this is definitely not the default in any distribution

You're going to tell me that the round, bubbly blue title bars (whose construction are directly lifted from Windows'), were not directly inspired by the latest OS's from Apple and Microsoft?

Yes, I am. Creative use of the SHAPE-Extension for windows decorations have been around much longer than OS X and Windows XP. Take a look at Blue Steel, and theme that came default with Enlighenment 0.16 (which according to Freshmeat came out October 1999, long before anyone thought about Windows 2000). It has a shaped (i.e. not strictly rectangular) title bar.

When is Linux going to stop aiming to be JUST LIKE WINDOWS! and do something "innovative" in the GUI area?

As soon as you do some work in this direction. This is Open Source after all.

Oh, that's right. THEY WON'T, simply because all those open source programmers are PROGRAMMERS and know nothing about UI design!

I doub that the one who did Keramik is a programmer. Even if he is, he is also a great artist.

There's a REASON you won't find any UI features in KDE that haven't already appeared in Windows or Mac OS. Microsoft and Apple pay people who deserve the money BIG BUCKS to design UI's and perform focus groups.

You do now that both Microsoft and Apple also have programms that perform very poorly in usability tests? Take a look at the Interface Hall of Shame. There are quite some MS-products in there (and even Apples Quicktime). Sometimes they even make a bad UI for political reasons, which you most probably won't find in open source projects.

Hm ... so much work for a Troll, but I think it's worth it.

I have always considered the best feature of Mac OS X to be the lack of support for Notes/Domino, coming in well higher on the list than the robust Unix underpinnings, elegant interface, etc. I simply cannot exaggerate my dislike for Notes/Domino. I had a CS degree and had done some C development professionally, but no web app development when I accepted the Notes/Domino development position. I swear, if I had not discovered Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP with some codeplay on my own time, it would have taken YEARS for me to have grasped the coherent flow of a web application. Domino with its "agents" (which won't handle dynamically generated fields), @formula, and document-based DB model is the most obfuscated example of the web app development model that I could posibly imagine in my widlest and most esoteric musings. It is with great trepidation that I witness the ushering in of this foul beast, borne of the minds of a band of seething madmen from Lotus. And Notes as a e-mail/PIM client sucks as well. It made it into a special in-depth section of the Interface Hall of Shame: http://www.iarchitect.com/lotus.htm It is a dark day for OS X indeed. blakespot -- iPodHacks.com

I doubt it. They won't even read their OWN guidelines:

The Windows User Interface Guidelines for Software Design, Microsoft Press.

Quote from book: "consistency makes the interface familiar and predictable".

Referenced from the Interface Hall of Shame.

Check the Interface Hall of Shame entry about QuickTime player. They had the same brain-damage in iTunes.

If we agree on 2 things, that a web site is a UI and that by learning what makes a design bad you can make good ones, then this one'll help you:

The Interface Hall of Shame

It concerns itself mainly with applications, but the concepts are there.

As an afterthought, one tihng I really liked was on the bbc site; there's a link to a low-graphics version, or was that a text only one, I forget. If you want real elegant design, make the content independent of the HTML and generate the page dynamically based on client capability and preference.

Two words: Lotus Notes

Three words: WORST PROGRAM EVER.

The fact that Notes/Domino is generally perceived as Exchange's primary competition is the reason that Exchange has completely dominated the corporate messaging market despite its many horrible, crippling flaws. Personally, I'd choose either Exchange or a messy suicide over having to use Notes ever again.

There are UI guidelines for most OS's/Windowing systems. Some are fairly strict (MacOS)

Unless you are Steve Jobs, in which case you may throw your own rulebook right out the window. Damn do I hate QT Player.

This site hasn't been updated recently, but has many great examples of what not to do.

Design the exterior of a box that would do what your program does. Make it easy to look at and easy to understand. Mimic that in your GUI.

But make sure your mimicry of the real world doesn't override the usability of your GUI.

And another tip that I've not yet seen posted - Always always have people beta test the interface for you, without supplying them help files or the like (making sure these people are sufficiently computer-experienced as to not make 'what's a right-click?' type statements). If possible watch them and take notes, or better, videotape them to review them. An excellent GUI will require no additional help files in order to understand, such that any help that is actually included would be supplimentary to understanding the more advanced features. (Of course, this does not mean to use Wizards for anything. GUIs should have minimal text on the screen to start).

And also, never hard-code the colors for window/dialog backgrounds, fonts, or the like. I know of people that don't use the default grey for window or black text, and it's amazing how many programs are unusable because they try to draw (fixed) black text on (user-selected) black backgrounds. I know Win32, Classic MacOS (and would expect OSX to have it too), and both KDE and GNOME have the appropriate hooks that you can grab what the user-selected color scheme is instead of fixing it to your own colors.

After getting a copyright, or an intellectual property, a company must defend it tooth and nail from ANY kind of predatory or even harmless knockoffs.

Point taken, but by your line of reasoning, Slashdot should soon receive mail from Apple's lawyers, since the new look of this topic could be qualified as a "harmless" knockoff. They're walking a thin line here, I hope they know what they're doing.

As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - but I think there's no way you can make OS X out of WinXP by slapping a skin on it, all the ugliness and UI blunders are right underneath, right down to the infamous "Aqua" blue screen so familiar to Windows users.

One of the main reasons Apple is still in business is the consistency of the user interface, and this - together with the solid foundation of OS X, good hardware and applications - should be their unique selling points.

Apple has been doing some mistakes with the UI lately (see for example this, this, this, or this page), and I'd rather see them working on improving the greatest UI on earth than on suing a non-commercial website about some Aqua-lookalike skin. Investing time and money to make sure nobody in the neighborhood has a house the same color as yours and at the same time neglecting to take care of the foundations which are slowly rotting away is not a good idea.

Raymond

(P.S. I understand everybody who wants to change the default look of Windows XP - every time I see it I'm expecting Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po to cavort over the desktop, and this gives me the creeps :P )

Dont forget about the Interface Hall of Shame. Its great reading on what *NOT* to do with a GUI and even fun for browsing while trying to avoid doing work.

It's not just coincidence that having the menu appear below the pointer is a lot faster, or that buttons along the edge are faster to access because you can't overshoot. This phenomena is an example of Fitts' Law (check out usability guru Bruce Tognazinni's article here ). One of the ways that GNUstep truly thrashes KDE usability-wise is that the GNUstep environment has really large buttons often with text right under the icon. By the nature of their size, these buttons can be accessed with a mouse far faster than the really tiny toolbar buttons you often see in other desktop environments. The labels for the buttons also give a clear indication as to what action the button performs; there is no need for the user to try and decipher what a particular icon stands for.

KDE, on the other hand, blindly copies microsoft's system of extremely tiny, unlabelled toolbar buttons that have extremely slow mouse access times and extremely small and cryptic icons whose true nature can only be discovered by either clicking on the toolbar button and possibly performing a destructive task or painstakingly holding the mouse over the toolbar button for several unbearable seconds to get the tooltip. "But Microsoft spends zillions of dollars on usability research" some say. And they spend tens of zillions on security research with results just as good. Microsoft is by far the most frequent inductee into the user interface hall of shame , and such windows UI shennanigans as multi-level tabs, window in window MDI, and Window XP/2000's dynamic menus have been frequently and harshly criticized in the UI design community. "But Windows users coming to Linux will be familiar with lots of really tiny, confusing, toolbar buttons with slow access times" they say. Windows users are certainly familiar with the Blue Screen of Death--maybe we should put stuff in the linux kernel to make it crash so they'll feel right at home. Yes, I know that there are options in KDE to have icons and text appear together. But this is not done by default. And probably 90% of users end up using the default which is installed with their application/OS. If you don't believe me, just ask Netscape. In the cold, hard reality of end-user desktop UI design, not doing something by default is really the same thing as not doing it.

I challenge the KDE Usability project to, by default, give KDE have large, labelled toolbar buttons that are fast to access and easy to understand. They of course don't have to take this challenge; some people would prefer linux not to get on the desktop.

Apple, IBM, MS have spent billions on human Interface research to make computers easier to use.

Insightful? Only to someone that doesn't have to use Windows & Office and daily see the problems in their UI.

I don't see any realistic alternatives, either, but I wish I did. I think that the desktop metaphor helped us immensely at first but is now holding us back.

Some alternatives have been tried and rejected. Examples:
1) IBM (and others) tried to make on-screen objects look and act like real objects.
Real CD player and RealPhone
2) The desktop can be expanded to a virtual office building, with file cabinets in a virtual file room. This doesn't work because it is really the same as a desktop, except with the added advantage of seeming beaurocratic and unfriendly.
3) Virtual reality was destined for greatness as an interface. Maybe there's hope as computers get more and more powerful. Or maybe people don't want to wear goggles and sci-fi wired gloves just to check their email.

I think there are some good reasons that the desktop is still alive:
1) It works pretty well. Not perfect, but good enough for most things most of the time.
2) It is entrenched in our thinking.
3) Inertia and legacy code.
4) Coming up with good, useful, extendable metaphors is difficult.

So, the desktop lives on. Maybe the real breakthrough will be actual physical devices that can hide the computer underneath so they're just "smart", not computers.

I don't see any realistic alternatives, either, but I wish I did. I think that the desktop metaphor helped us immensely at first but is now holding us back.

Some alternatives have been tried and rejected. Examples:
1) IBM (and others) tried to make on-screen objects look and act like real objects.
Real CD player and RealPhone
2) The desktop can be expanded to a virtual office building, with file cabinets in a virtual file room. This doesn't work because it is really the same as a desktop, except with the added advantage of seeming beaurocratic and unfriendly.
3) Virtual reality was destined for greatness as an interface. Maybe there's hope as computers get more and more powerful. Or maybe people don't want to wear goggles and sci-fi wired gloves just to check their email.

I think there are some good reasons that the desktop is still alive:
1) It works pretty well. Not perfect, but good enough for most things most of the time.
2) It is entrenched in our thinking.
3) Inertia and legacy code.
4) Coming up with good, useful, extendable metaphors is difficult.

So, the desktop lives on. Maybe the real breakthrough will be actual physical devices that can hide the computer underneath so they're just "smart", not computers.

It is also #1 in the user interface hall of shame, is horrendous on server and space requirement and from everyone I talked to who runs one, it goes down more than a prostitute with an inner ear problem.

At this time of writing I have a grand total of 4(four) icons on my desktop. Only one of these is a shortcut. I have 12 more shortcuts on my taskbar (so, I use Windows. Sue me. ;o) ). One of the more used icons on my desktop is the one opening the dazzling labyrinth that is my file-system.

I've never really caught on to the desktop-concept. Maybe it's just me.. The desktop is the background for the windows opened by the applications I run. The harddisk on the other hand is the storage for my files (filing-cabinet anyone..?).

The desktop is a metaphor for a physical thing. And a bad one at that. As a lot of UI-design books will tell you one should be very careful when trying to use metaphors. Have a look at Interface Hall of Shame for some examples.

Why do the author of the above article seem to think that multiplying an already bad interface will make it better? And even if the metaphor was a good one I've yet to see office-workers with e.g. a desk per client..

The problem with finding the next great interface is that the fundamentals in a computer-system is not about to change. We will have (and need) a lot of files (information split into little logical parts) for a long time to come. There is no way around this. Abstracting the storage-space and placing the files on seperate desktops instead of having them in folders accessible from anywhere does not change this fact.

About the only ways to get post-60's/70's into most backend business systems is to either start with it (still get same out-of-date problem in five, ten or fifteen years) or to have the higher-ups declare that a particular system will be used. Too bad a lot of Linux companies are getting a bad rap. If the hype had kept going, a lot of higher-ups would probably have switched to *Open Source* systems just to be the first in their country club to have all-Linux accounting department.

Sorry about the cynicism but I've worked with migrating few small inventory and accounting systems to something from the 90's and none of them were pretty from the personal or technical point of view. Sometimes it's all about culture.

I am constantly amazed at the Quicktime UI. Apple, without a doubt, has some of the most talented designers in the world. And after so many years to work on it, it still manages to release the most incredibly AWFUL client software for Quicktime.

It's an historical case study in bad interface design! And every subsequent version is just as bad. Clunky UI elements. Inconsistent behaviour. Complete absence of any sort of optimization.

The very awfulness of it is fascinating. It's the roadside car wreck of software development.

hell the current version of the Windows client still hasn't even implemented a full-screen mode...

Oh, it's there. But you have to pay extra for it! Unbelievable.

I mean, c'mon. How come we can run something as tightly tied into windows as Windows Media Player in wine with no problems, but we can't run QuickTime? It's mainly because Apple decided to design QT base don a non-standard toolkit, and make it's user interface a living hell. Not only that, but in windows it takes 3x as long to load as Windows media Player. I don't hate it as much as Real (Hello, bloatware / spyware!), but Apple really messed up awhile back, IMO.

However, what should be remembered is that Notes is a database and workflow application. It is not an Emailer or even a PIM.

Make the title (that which appears in the title bar of your browser window) describe what the page is. At least on my browser, when you bookmark a page, this title is what appears in the bookmarks list. In this context, "Welcome", "Home", "Buy Online" etc. are very unhelpful, but "Acme Products Mail Order" lets me find your site again.

Others have commented on font - I'll just point to an example of how not to do it. Here is a story from Aviation Week. Notice how, having used a minscule font, they then add to the effect by using mid-grey for the text on a white background.

Checkout also the interface hall of shame, although this is aimed more at applications than web pages.

Of course it's a pity that the site hasn't been updated for years now but to be honest GUIs haven't changed that much and it's as relevant as ever.

We wish we found IBM's Lotus Notes a long time ago. This single application could
have formed the basis for the entire site. The interface is so problematic, that one might conclude that the designers had previously visited this site, and misread "Hall of Shame" as "Hall of Fame".

Then you have been overlooking the obvious, like the colorful gumdrops on the title bar. Or the horrendous interface on the Quicktime player (which has a whole chapter devoted to it in the Interface Hall of Shame.

OS X made a lot of changes to the OS 9 interface and that has been a shock to the system for many, however, once you give it a chance you find that the vast majority of those changes are improvements in usability and efficiency,

Of course they are: MacOS 9 had lots of serious usability problems and left a lot of room for improvement.

As for your claim that Apple is no longer about technology: you've got to be kidding, right?

Well, what kind of technology has Apple developed recently? They don't even have much of a research lab anymore. Apple is about design and appearance, not technology.

sounds like a candidate for the Interface Hall Of Shame

Hmmm...I guess this isn't the same as this Pirates...

in my experience, Open Source apps are usually more intuitive and more stable than the professional ones I've seen. Lotus Notes in particular takes the booby prize as the least intuitive app with the most horribe UI I've ever run across.

That being said, I do have to wonder why Lokisoft's dialogs are the exact reverse of everyone else's in terms of button placement. They always put cancel on the left. What's up with that? I've bitched at them about it several times (I forgot to corner Draeker and ask him about it at the last CLIQ.) I've never got a response with an explanation, though.

A lot of it is common sense, but many X developers would do well to go through the site. Fortunately the GTK pushes developers in the right direction (build the tools, and you can implicitly enforce the standards), but we still have a ways to go for GNOME to be as consistent as, say, Macs were in the late '90s.

Oh, and M$ bashers will have many opportunities for chuckles here. :-)

• Vince Flanders
• Jakob Nielson
• Interface hall of shame

None of us have of course ever committed any of the sins listed here - well, erm...

show me a succesful application based on raskin's principles and i'll buy this fawning fanboy crap. good ideas are a dime a dozen. proven ideas aren't. on that note, given the proliferation of "GUI Bloopers" type books and sites out there like the interface hall of shame it sure would be nice if people managed to just invest a little quality in existing GUI design principles. The start menu in windows, for example, violates microsoft's own design guidelines on menus (not to cascade more than one level)
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Wow! You are the first person that I have ever heard that actually likes Lotus Notes. I had to use it for 3 years at my last job, and that was enough (I am happy with Pine at my current job...).

If you want a good laugh, check out the Interface Hall of Shame. The developer comments are especially funny- the developers need to understand that if the user thinks the interface is crappy, it doesn't matter what they think of it- its a crappy interface.

There is an awful lot of literature in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Personally I like the book 'The Elements of User Interface Design' by Theo Mandel, who also worked on the OS/2 Workplace Shell.

There also is a lot of literature available on the Web. Very informative is the User Interface Hall of Shame. You may also want to check out IBM's Easy of Use website. If you are an ACM member you have access to an abundance of articles on various HCI subjects. Personally I find Intelligent User Interfaces an interesting subject.

Enough information for now....

ON the other hand, the windowmanager protion of Windows and Explorer both suck. www.iarchitect.com has an extensive critique of Explorer, the Common File Dialog, and the Find function in their Interface Hall of Shame Yes, Apple's Quicktime player is in there too, but for good reason (and I've hacked mine to be more 'normal').

These are the most commonly used portions of Windows itself. And the Mac OS has them beat all hollow.

ON the other hand, the windowmanager protion of Windows and Explorer both suck. www.iarchitect.com has an extensive critique of Explorer, the Common File Dialog, and the Find function in their Interface Hall of Shame Yes, Apple's Quicktime player is in there too, but for good reason (and I've hacked mine to be more 'normal').

These are the most commonly used portions of Windows itself. And the Mac OS has them beat all hollow.

ON the other hand, the windowmanager protion of Windows and Explorer both suck. www.iarchitect.com has an extensive critique of Explorer, the Common File Dialog, and the Find function in their Interface Hall of Shame Yes, Apple's Quicktime player is in there too, but for good reason (and I've hacked mine to be more 'normal').

These are the most commonly used portions of Windows itself. And the Mac OS has them beat all hollow.

ON the other hand, the windowmanager protion of Windows and Explorer both suck. www.iarchitect.com has an extensive critique of Explorer, the Common File Dialog, and the Find function in their Interface Hall of Shame Yes, Apple's Quicktime player is in there too, but for good reason (and I've hacked mine to be more 'normal').

These are the most commonly used portions of Windows itself. And the Mac OS has them beat all hollow.

This is a bit old, but the Interface Hall of Shame has a good critique of QT4...

iarchitect.com may be the site you were thinking of. It was featured on slashdot early this year.

I use linux with WindowMaker and Enlightenment, both GUIs function just like I described.

The point I was trying to make is that the start -> shutdown -> log out sequence is hardly intuitive. It's not even logical; a win9x box is the only machine I know of where you push the "start" button to turn it off, and slipping the logoff function under "shut down" just adds a further level of ridiculously confusing cruft.

If you want a thorough explanation of the elements of the windows GUI that suck (and a lot of other apps too), look at the interface hall of shame (not a goatse.cx link, I promise).

If a 90% market share is the best reason you can think of to use windows... BAAAA, you're a sheep. If 90% of people drove a Yugo, I still wouldn't want one.

Palm Beach County's ballot is a great example of this; I could go over the problems with it again, but I'm pretty sure we're all fairly familiar with the commentary on it by now. If a UI designer ever tried to sneak something like this into a software interface, he/she'd be drummed out of the company in an instant.

Here's a Critique of RealCD interface which supports what you just said.

-----
D. Fischer

Whenever you see a brain dead piece of software design - take a trawl through the Interface Hall of Shame for inspiration - then patent the lousy practice.

Since no one will want to pay our steep royalties to use the lousy ideas then eventually only the intelligent and intuitive software design will remain.

A great idea, huh? Better patent it. .-)

Regards, Ralph.

Not that Linux desktop/gnome looks that great, but the bottom line is how it functions. Sure, it should look nice, but form over function has never worked for me - you just end up getting frustrated.

Personally, I like things simple, and people should be referencing the Interface Hall of Fame (and the follow the link to the Hall of Shame, too).

One good example: the logout screenshot. I don't see how it makes anything more simple - or easier to recognize right off the bat, more than the current one. I look at those icons, and I still have to read the text - now I've done two things instead of one. Sometimes you just can't convey a complex meaning in an icon, especially not without it being confused with other actions.

I'm not slamming MS here, though, they seem to be giving the people what they want, as can be seen on this board.
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Sorry, seeing "very easy and extremely non-technical" associated with Lotus Notes kind of set me off...

Sorry, seeing "very easy and extremely non-technical" associated with Lotus Notes kind of set me off...