Are there any good resources/idioms for visually designing business applications?

Question

I think we're all aware of what "your company's line-of-business software" looks like.

Are there any resources, rules of advice, or general tricks to visually taming applications like this? Our business's domain is pretty complex, as most are, and our customers demand a great amount of flexibility. Tracking a boatload of fields on each object isn't exactly avoidable.

Besides general advice, I'm also interested in usage and tools specific to WinForms. If there are any examples of (visually) well-designed software of this type, that would help as well.

Answer 1

I'm a programmer who used to work in a publications department. My advice is: Use a graphic designer; trust their opinions; and know if you are not one.

Here at the office, where we don't have a graphic designer, we have a bi-weekly "interface meeting" with a few developers and a few non-developers to hammer out these sorts of problems and develop design rules we can follow.

Answer 2

There is a site that I visit every now and then to be reminded of what not to do: Interface Hall of Shame.

A quick googling turns this up, which goes more into detail of the most common UI mistakes, which boils down to:

1. Non-Standard GUI Controls
   
   1. Looking Like a GUI Control Without Being One
2. Inconsistency
3. No Perceived Affordance
   1. Tiny Click Targets
4. No Feedback
   1. Out to Lunch Without a Progress Indicator
5. Bad Error Messages
6. Asking for the Same Info Twice
7. No Default Values
8. Dumping Users into the App
9. Not Indicating How Info Will Be Used
10. System-Centric Features

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There are some books that you should read too:

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Mainly, try to use the platform standard widgets, guidelines and rules.

Answer 3

Most bad UI's I have seen are a result of few problems:

• Lack of a good Business expert; and with free time. Most are doing their job and helping developers/designers with the UI.
• Lack of Planning on the UI design and the business logic attached. The GUI gets stretched to fit the business logic or vise versa.
• Lack of experienced developers, and ones who enjoy doing GUI development.
• More push for a quicker release rather than a quality release.
• Lack of good UI examples to follow.

The are a lot of books on the subject, but they can be hard to find:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735619247/ref=oss_product

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590596943/ref=oss_product

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596514557/ref=oss_product

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interfaces-Patterns-Effective-Interaction/dp/0596008031/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269541294&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/GUI-Bloopers-2-0-Second-Technologies/dp/0123706432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269541318&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-2-0-Interaction-ebook/dp/B001PIINYG/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1269541371&sr=8-5

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-for-Interaction-ebook/dp/B000SEGT4Y/ref=sr_1_34?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1269541488&sr=8-34