User Interface Design
A class in the Art Institue of Atlanta built a quick survey asking which design elements you prefer, and by studying the results they can build better websites. Research ended on December, 2007 but the survey and results are still viewable. The survey is limited and is just scratches the surface of user interface design.
In my line of work, it’s very important to take into account the particulars of the UI (user interface) otherwise what’s the point? You’re just thrown into a website and left to fend for yourself without a clear understanding of which direction to go, which button to click and what to do with yourself.
I’m currently working on a website that very much needs a healthy dose of UI design… actually it just needs a UI. Period. Links are all over the place and sometimes, in order to get to the page you want, you have to go through a page which is only accessible if you go back to the home page and find it somewhere in the middle/bottom of the content. Did that make sense? No, it didn’t and that sucks. A website without a proper navigation will only lead to frustration and lost audience. So let’s not let that happen, shall we? (Maybe I’ll even show you the site once it’s good and ready.)
User Interface Design Links To Study
- Interface Research
- Usernomics: User Interface Design (Scroll below and you’ll find even more links to study)
- Bad Practice in User Interface Design - Misuse of the Drop-down Menu
Simon Kitson wrote an article focusing on “the drop-down menu and its use, or misuse, in website interface design”. - Apple Human Interface Guidelines
Have a look at one of biggest brand in the world is doing with interface design, and not only that, they have a whole reference library on it. To me, this is a gold-mine of a resource, perhaps too large and all-encompassing to be of any use when designing for the individual or small to very small business website but you can’t go wrong where one mega company went right.
What Not To Do
- SAP Design Guild: Golden Rules for Bad User Interfaces
From application systems to websites, SAP Design Guild rounded up the worst examples of UI design and urge you to do the opposite. - Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design
Jakob Nielsen has been rounding up these top-10 lists since 1996 and now that he’s updated this list for 2007, some of those mistakes are still in full force.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Great writeup,
The reason the one on the right looks so appealing is due to white space. If you look at The New York Times you will see plenty of white space, when you have lots of information, having area’s where the eye can relax is key. This is also called information architecture and the use of fibonacci’s golden rule. informationarchitects.jp is a place where you can learn a lot about it. We covered a couple of stories, but most don’t understand it and don’t wish to understand it.
This type of design also goes hand in hand with grid layout. But in my experience, corporate companies and large industries don’t know what these things are, and don’t see the benefit in them. They want colors, big images, big logo’s, and basically everything the web wasn’t created for.
Good read!