User Interface Design

Question

Where do you turn when creating user interface? I am a programmer, not a designer. Any ideas? My "UI" is usually terrible, as I just want to make it work, what do you do?

Answer 1

I turn to... DESIGNERS! I remember Jeff Atwood posting about this on Coding Horror a while ago, but it deserves to be said again: programmers make terrible designers!

There's sites like 99designs (stack overflow used it to obtain their logo) where you can hire out the work for fairly cheap.

Answer 2

See this thread for a few tips:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6729/icons-how-does-a-developer-with-no-design-skill-make-his-apps-look-pretty

To sum it up: get someone with skills to do it or keep it very clean and simple.

Answer 3

I usually start by copying something else, and then changing/improving it until it looks how I want. I'm a not-designer as well, and don't have much artistic sense, and honestly cannot be bothered spending days (weeks) creating a UI for an application; it is much easier to just take something else and spin it how I like.

The MSDN blogs are usually a good place to look for inspiration, since many of the writers like to pimp applications/websites that use their favourite technologies (Brad Abrams' blog is good if you're looking for WPF-ish interfaces).

Answer 4

I always figured it was just get someone else to do it...if only I had a creative bone in my body...

Was really just looking for good (hopefully free) places that would help with it. Will check out 99designs. Thanks

Answer 5

I usually do it all myself - just because my budget is quite limited.

However there are some books that might be worth reading:

• Homepage Usability - 50 Websites Deconstructed by Jakob Nielsen & Marie Tahir
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell
• Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen & Hoa Loranger

And it's always a good thing to look what other sites do that you like :)

Answer 6

...and if you're looking to do something web based, check out the references in this thread:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2711/what-sites-offer-free-quality-web-site-design-templates

I like to use sites like these for some complete sites bits and pieces that I put together when doing my own design. Just make sure to keep credit where credit is due.

Answer 7

@AdamLerman You're never going to find somebody to do your design for free. Everything costs money, especially artists' Photoshop time.

Answer 8

If you're writing desktop applications, simply following the UI guidelines for your chosen platform will take you a long way.

If it's on the web then you're broadly screwed, you just need a designer.

That said, don't get fooled into thinking that UI design is all about the the visual appearance. Having the right interaction model is probably more important. A graphic designer isn't going to help you with that. If you don't have access to a UI specialist then try starting with User Interface Design for Programmers.

Answer 9

Google User Experience and The laws of simplicity are very good starts.

I was always bad at design, but after reading a lot about usability, simplicity, design and starting to analyse google's design and other designs based on simplicity, my UIs started to suck less.

Answer 10

In the home automation of world there are plenty of independent designers. I prototype with a very simple interface and then use the graphics and layout from GuiFX

Answer 11

Spend lots of time exploring new applications that other people have made. Find things that you find work well and use them in your next project. Slowly you will build up a repertoire of good UI practices.

Answer 12

LukeW has several articles, books, and examples on user interface design an usability issues.

I've especially found the Web Application Form Design article to be helpful.

Answer 13

Back before I knew there was an internet I read the Apple Human Interface Guidelines which it would seem they've been keeping up to date.

You can also read some totally different takes, like Raskin's

So I suppose the answer is read. AFTER you've thought about what you want to do and how, you hire the graphic designers to make it look good while it's happening. But I haven't yet found a designer who more than tweaked the application and I described it.

Answer 14

Many (graphic) designers do not understand the needs of a user-interface, one needs to do quite a lot of research and ask people to try out things - 'hands off' - and see what they do, what confuses them, what mistakes they make.

Most of the advice gives three steps to user-interface design: content or wireframe - what is in the interface, flow or relation - how the what links, and style - how it looks.

The topic is huge, there are good links previously posted, Coopers book 'About Face' although a bit wordy has explanations of various gotchas.

Answer 15

It seems pretty obvious but I'd suggest "User Interface Design for programmers" by Joel Spolsky. Versions available on paper and online. You can read it in half a day and get a good understanding on UI.

Answer 16

You don't have to be a great designer to come out with a decent UI and a great user experience for your application.

I think there are certain principles you can follow that can dramatically improve your application.

At a high level this includes:

• Identifying your top 3 use cases
• Measuring and reducing the number of clicks it takes to get through the top use cases
• Sketch, Prototype, Throw it away, and challenge yourself to do it with less

I've written a blog entry that attempts to write out some principles related to GUI design. Check it out and let me know what you think.

How to improve the User Experience of your GUI application with some simple principles.

Answer 17

The best book I've ever read on Usability/Interaction Design, and one of the best books I've read period, is a book called About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper.

It's a fantastic book because it talks about a lot of fundamental concepts behind interface design for any type of interface, not just on the web. Understanding these concepts will help you make better creative decisions, especially when designing something that hasn't been design yet (like a new product or type of social website), not just help you copy what's already been done.