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User Interface Design for Programmers
Spolsky's light writing style makes this book an easy read, and his personal stories and anecdotes help make his thoughts on user interface stick in your mind when you're done reading. He provides programmers with a few simple guidelines to follow, such as "People Can't Read," and "People Can't Control the Mouse."
His focus on the logic of good user interfaces and his push to develop a good user model is bound to resonate and get programmers to think about making their interfaces logical from the user's perspective, rather than the perspective of the inner architecture, which the user could typically care less about.
The reminder to focus on the tasks the user is trying to accomplish rather than the long feature list that usually gets attached to product specifications should be read by product managers as well, of course. In fact, the absence of specific platform details makes the book a good read for anyone involved in software design -- with the caveat that it is not aimed at people with much design experience. This is a great starter book and makes the process understandable, friendly, and fun-sounding. (One of the things I appreciated was how much fun it sounds like Spolsky has when he's working.)
Spolsky encourages showing the in-progress software to users and watching them use it. I think one of his best points about usability testing is that if the programmers and designers cannot bother to watch the users during the testing, they're unlikely to gain much from a thick report by a testing lab. He encourages simple, quick, and casual usability testing, something even the smallest firm could afford and from which they would could draw useful improvements.
If you have much design experience, you'll find this book a bit basic, but even then the examples are worthwhile to read and remind yourself how a good idea can be poorly implemented sometimes -- usually by taking it too far! I was personally hoping for some richer comments about designing web applications, but if more people start paying attention to the basic guidelines he's covered here, web users will benefit.
In summary, the book is aimed at programmers without much design experience and Spolsky does a great job of hitting his mark. I think product managers without much design experience would benefit as well, as it provides a good basis for thinking about user interface design.
You can purchase User Interface Design for Programmers from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
To just put Clippy, or any other Microsoft Agent into your app. And tyo make your app really cool, make sure you can't disable it.
Is that users are fucking idiots.
Some user just posted an item how she highlighted her work and then hit 'backspace' and deleted everything.
She wanted to know what we could do for her.
'Feel bad' was about all we could come up with. 'Laugh' was another, but we didn't think she'd like that.
The opposite of progress is congress
More annoyingly, most users think they know how to do UI better. :)
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
GAMES:
1. If the user doesn't have to stop what he's doing to solve an inexplicable puzzle every few minutes, he'll be done waaaay too fast.
2. Obey the principle of most astonishment. Surprise the user as often as possible! Preferably with something terrifying that makes him literally fling himself out of his chair (example: the aliens in Alien Vs. Predator love to sneak up on you along walls and ceilings and suddenly let you have it from three directions -- a guaranteed excuse to press "pause" and go put on a new pair of underwear).
3. If the user screws something up, HE MUST BE PUNISHED. Usually, this means his onscreen persona (resume, spreadsheet, etc) should die a wretched, gory death, scaring the crap out of the user (see #2) and he should have to start whatever he was doing over from his last save point. This of course encourages saving documents frequently, always a good thing with Microsoft software.
4. If the software includes networking features, you MUST include a "taunt" feature. Allow preformatted taunts and on-the-fly taunts; both are equally fun for all. "Hey, BILL! Your powerpoint SUCKS!"
5. And, finally, you have to include a few easter eggs and hidden areas. These should include a "must-have" that isn't granted to ordinary users (like, say, print preview).
And, people said video gaming wouldn't ever get me anywhere!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
What's most annoying to programmer egos is that the users are right.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Just model everything after vi!
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
well.. in linux programmers did the ui.
in windows the ui designers did the program..
hmm.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Coping Apple's interface designs seems to work well for folks who are too cheep to hire anyone that knows anything about information architecture or GUI design.
:p
I advise doing that.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"