What Makes a Good UI?

OSXCPA asks: "While there are plenty of OS business apps from accounting to ERP, they seem to share a common failing with "commercial" software - the user interface is terrible! Has anyone seen an application that has a UI that made you sit up and stare in amazement at the simplicity and effectiveness of it? For the techno-elite, drooly-gui may not be a priority, but I am working on a project (OS) where I have to show real savings (in task performance time and reduced data entry error) on a specialized accounting system via better UI. Am looking for some inspiration. Any ideas? Projects? Books?"

Comments

Re:Eclipe IDE

[EnglishTim]

You have to be fucking kidding me.

It's a file editor. With no 'open file' menu option !

Check out "GUI Bloopers"

[t482]

Quite a good book on what not to do. Kind of like a checklist of mistakes to avoid.

Gui Bloopers. Also I dislike Swing - but the Java Look and feel design guidelines are ok. Apple, and gnome have similar documents.

Thats easy

[T-Ranger]

Something that doesnt have animated paperclips or dogs.

ed

[geoffspear]

ed. No, don't laugh.

ALl of ed's commands are single letters. What could be easy to remember than a single letter?

a appends text. c changes lines. Simple!

And the error reporting is second to none! If your command contains an error, ed helpfully prints "?" to your terminal. No memorizing what 200 different error messages mean, all you need to remember is "?". Isn't ed great?