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I'm looking for free tools to design the UI for my web app.
I'm pretty new to this field, so please point me to acceptable solutions.
Basically, I need to fill a "screen" with some controls, that's it.
Thanks.
EDIT: Well, as soon as nobody answers, maybe somebody can help me with this problem for some framework other than Cappuccino?
If you have a Mac, you can use Apple's UI design tool Interface Builder and then convert the result to Cappuccino using the nib2cib utility. But if you're pretty new, this might not be the solution you need since it does require decent understanding of the code. Still, it is free.
gomockingbird is a GREAT wireframing tool.
Also check out Powerpoint or Keynote, as they are great for this too!
Go here The Dev Show they did a whole episode on wireframing and tools. If you don't want to listen to the podcast look at the show notes as lots of pointer.
You can now use Google Docs for free to do this and there are a lot of templates for this for UI etc.
Balsamiq is a great wireframe tool.
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As a front-end developer, I would like to develop nice and good usability web applications. However, normally developers are good at coding. So, I would ask how to get started with learning some UI design knowledge? What's your recommended books or courses for a newbie to learn? Basically for graphic design, fonts and colors etc etc.
As a UI/UX developer myself, graphic design techniques are questions related to Photoshop, Illustrator, color theory, typography, etc. Usability is related to UI/UX, coding and web architecture. Graphic design and web usability are two very distinctive fields.
What is User Experience Design? - Wiki article on UX
User Experience is any aspect of a person's interaction with a given
IT system, including the interface, graphics, industrial design,
physical interaction, and the manual.
What is graphic Design? - Wiki article on Graphic Design
"Graphic design is the art of communication, stylizing, and
problem-solving through the use of type and image."
Resources #Nathan provided are great, I would also add this to your reading arsenal, education and inspiration:
Open University classes
University of Washington - Visualization
MIT - Drawings & Numbers
USQ - Multimedia
Berkeley - Computer Graphics
Sites & Inspirations
OnePageLove
Responsive.ly
A List Apart
Awwwards
Css Tricks
Tuts plus
Can I use
As with any other skill set, to way to get better is practice, practice, practice. I would just keep building projects as case studies and learn the skill sets as you venture through different types of web applications.
Best of luck on this journey.
Books are good, but to stay upfront and get aware of what is happening the latest and what tools and techniques are in, I suggest you to actively participate on webistes like
Smashing Magazine,
Sitepoint &
Web design Ledger
to name a few, but top quality resources. To know more about the books, you can refer to
Apress Books for front end development
for start to ninja resources.
Hope this helps.
Build on the shoulders of those who have gone before. To be a great developer, you have to know your stuff. In the same way, to be a good designer requires understanding of some basic foundational guidelines. Some of it may seem pretty simple and tedious, but understanding the proper principles of typography, color theory, grid systems and so on can help you a lot. A few resources to get you going are:
Universal Principles of Design
The Elements of Typographic Design by Robert Bringhurst
Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton
Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type by Kimberly Elam
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
Microinteractions: Designing with Details by Dan Saffer
That list should generate it's own follow-on books / websites reading list for you.
Ask questions. Find some designers you really like and ask questions. Try to understand why they made the decisions they did. Most people are pretty willing to talk about their own work. Asking questions helps you to understand why designers use (or don't use) certain design principles in their work.
Actually design (and seek out constructive criticism.) Like anything you do in life, reading and learning can only take you so far. At some point, you have to start practicing. Find a small circle / community of more senior designers who can review your designers and give you some brutal, but constructive criticism. Your stuff will suck at first. Everyone's work does. Designers spend hours upon hours honing their talents and skills. Don't get discouraged by it. Just like anything you can gain mastery in, it takes time. Having people in your life who can give constructive feedback is a huge help.
Have a look at WebAwwards never let me down yet... Great selection and new websites added every day
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Hey Y'all - I'm using the ~/Library/PDF Services directory to inject an item into the PDF Workflow sub-menu (Print dialog box) in OS-X/Leopard.
I got an indication that the PDF Services directory is gone in Snow Leopard. Does anyone know the correct way to hook into the Print dialog's PDF Workflow going forward?
Thanks!
[Note: I got some time on an S-Leo system the other day. find made it pretty clear that the user ~/Library/PDF Services is not to be found someplace else. The system /Library/PDF Services is still in place. I changed my app to just make the directory if it is missing, and the S-Leo print dialog box finds it just fine. So the soln is to just make the directory if it is not already there.]
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I will start developing my next desktop application in about a month. In the past I have delivered functional software that hasn't wowed anyone, including myself, in the usability or aesthetics department.
Does anybody know of any resources or guides or even books that could showcase examples of good design in desktop software?
There seems to be a lot of resources for web apps, but such resources for desktop applications are rather slim.
I enjoyed these dot net rocks tv videos by Mark Miller on The Science of a Great User Experience really got me thinking about good ui:
http://www.dnrtv.com/default.aspx?showNum=112
http://www.dnrtv.com/default.aspx?showNum=123
Where you can really make a difference with GUI design is if you are addressing a difficult to understand concept in a GUI.
When you are doing that, creativity is critical. When dealing with complex hardware configurations (something I had to do a lot, but probably doesn't apply to you), I've had good luck going to tech manuals and tech support people and trying to completely understand the problem. Then I took the methods they used to show me (diagrams from the manuals, whiteboard drawings, etc) and tried to code them into a GUI.
Had a couple massive successes with this.
Iteration is also critical. Prototype something quickly then beg everyone you see to try it. Ask them to solve a problem, then watch where they go first and watch what they have problems with.
Address every problem and stumbling block.
Don't be afraid to throw it all away and start over, it was only prototype code.
Separate your GUI from your implementation so that you can swap out the GUI if you find a better approach.
If you want to concentrate on just one feature, have a look at ITunes' search box which filters as you type. Other software may have had this before, but this was I think the first place I encountered it.
The difference between this and classic search was an eye opener for me in terms of readability.
Auto-complete which you see in so many places is another one. I'd recommend IntelliJ IDEA for the way it took auto-completion which emacs, Visual studio etc had for ages and added autocompletion for variable names and method names in a manner which almost seemed psychic the first time you encountered it.
You can look at Thirteen23 Experiences
To make things usable, you need to make sure that you follow existing conventions for your target platform and application type.
For example, if you're developing a Windows App you'd better make sure that control-c copies, control-v pastes, control-s saves, etc. The File menu better be the leftmost item in the menu bar, and the Help menu better by the rightmost item.
If you don't follow existing conventions, users are going to get annoyed with your application very quickly.
Google for HIG. Human Interface Guidelines typically include lots of research into best-practice in user interfaces, and explain in great detail how to design each aspect of a program. Also, have a google for "user-interface hall of shame" or something like that.
In this question I mentioned GUI bloopers. Part of great design is knowing what makes bad design and why. It is actually a great book, although I don't know how much of it is available on the website.
You can check case studys on websites of GUI companys. I fund few at www.puzzlehead.com
Check there and also other sites.
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I'm going to make my monthly trip to the bookstore soon and I'm kind of interested in learning some user interface and/or design stuff - mostly web related, what are some good books I should look at? One that I've seen come up frequently in the past is Don't Make Me Think, which looks promising.
I'm aware of the fact that programmers often don't make great designers, and as such this is more of a potential hobby thing than a move to be a professional designer.
I'm also looking for any good web resources on this topic. I subscribed to Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox newsletter, for instance, although it seems to come only once a month or so.
Thanks!
Somewhat related questions:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75863/what-are-the-best-resources-for-designing-user-interfaces
User Interface Design
Don't Make Me Think is the one!
Also check out Steve Krug's website for tips and sample forms for usability testing.
The design of everyday things ? An "old" classic, but useful if you plan anything that requires human interaction.
Joel Spolsky's User Interface Design for Programmers is at least entertaining, and a recommended read.
Tufte, Visual Display of Quantitative Information http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
Don Norman, Design of Everyday Things http://www.jnd.org/
Although completely independent of web and programming, The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman taught me a lot!
For a less in-depth, more cook-book approach (if you don't want to think), try Robin Williams' The Non-Designer's Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice.
Presonally I much prefer The Design of Everyday Things.
Also take a look at Alan Cooper's About Face.
The Apple Human Interface Guidlines are great!
This is not directly related to GUI design or programming, but The Psychology of Everyday Things is a good book to read.
It is a general look at how things are designed and how they fail. The concepts in this book, although not directly applicable to GUI's, do apply. In fact you could say they apply to all instances of user centered design.
http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067093
AboutFace.3.0
The Essentials of Interaction Design would be good Idea to read
"Don't Make Me Think" is great. After sitting in on several usability studies I can safely say that several of his biggest points are the kinds of things drilled in your head over and over.
Joel Spolsky's book on user interfaces is also decent.
http://www.amazon.com/User-Interface-Design-Programmers-Spolsky/dp/1893115941
Additionally to the great hints given so far, also see the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines, as described in this interesting blog post by Kirill Osenkov.
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Back in the days of Unix, you couldn't even close a software without reading the man page first. Then came Mac and Windows with consistent menu layout and keyboard shortcuts, but you still saw paper user manuals shipped in the shrinkwrap box, which described each and every single operation possible in the app. After the Internet, help files became html documents.
Nowadays with Web 2.0 applications, you hardly see the Help. Even if it's there, they simply describe some specific tasks. In other words, the apps are relying more on the common sense or don't-make-me-think factor of the user base.
Years ago Microsoft came up with a concept called Inductive User Interface, which basically tells programmers to put in instructions on the apps itself, but I am not sure how popular that idea is.
Are help files, user manuals, and context sensitive online help with F1 key dead? Have I failed if user could not find out what to do from the UI? If not, what degree of help should I provide? (both for desktop and web app)
EDIT: How does documentation/help file mesh with agile development methods? For example, should the developers think twice before UI changes that may obsolete a bunch of screenshots?
Three notes on help:
F1 / stand-alone context-sensitive help was always doomed. It was hidden by default, and so the people who most needed it were least likely to read it. There was hope at one time that we would be able to train users to always hit F1 when they ran into trouble, but too many applications without useful context-sensitive help... combined with too many bizarre help interfaces... pretty much killed this.
Manuals are as important now as they ever were. Not so many printed manuals anymore, but online manuals are better than ever. The proliferation of wiki-as-a-manual systems has helped here, reducing the up-front cost of creating good online documentation. Of course, plenty of people just don't read...
The beauty of using web pages as an application interface is that you can combine useful context-sensitive help with the UI, removing the barrier for novices and others who otherwise couldn't be bothered to look for relevant information when they get stuck.
Of course, there are still plenty of apps, even online apps, designed with obtuse interfaces and a tiny little help icon in a corner somewhere, presumably hoping that the latter mitigates the former. Pity them.
No way. You look at the amount of documentation and training and marketing expenditure even MS puts up.. you'll get your answer.
Try using someone else's product, and you will learn the true value of documentation - I'm learning Godiagrams right now.. :)
So I can say without a doubt.. NO and it never will.. no matter how intuitive user interfaces get.. beyond a certain size, you will need help and training. But by understanding the user and what he needs to get done, you could design it such that the time he/she needs to learn the system to do his/her routine tasks is minimal.
Have I failed if user could not find out what to do from the UI?
If not, what degree of help should I provide? (both for desktop and web app)
They should be able to use your your app to do basic things from the UI. eg say for an image editor, they should be able to create a new image, and draw some lines then save it just by looking at the UI.
This is best done by following common layouts (like having new, open and save under file in the menubar, and using the standard open and save dialogs).
The same goes for webapps, people exspect to be able to do the basic stuff without having to read the docs, but for more advanced features people will still read the docs. (eg most pople will read the docs for say BB code, or markdown at least sometimes, but they expect to be able to post without having to know them)
Are help files, user manuals, and context sensitive online help with F1 key dead?
They still have their place. People will use them to learn about how to best use various features, for example markdown or bbcode, or how to use filters to get certain effects in an image editor.
I've been incorporating context-sensitive screencasts into my applications. I've found this helps non-technical users grasp the application quickly, without asking for live help.
The Idiot/Dummy books must be doing quite well. Imagine if the standard application help was as good as those books. The standard F1 help for a lot of apps is just awful.
Is help dead? No, but some of it should be taken out and shot.