Saturday, December 4th, 2004
Graphical User Interface (GUI) Design Tips
Benjamin Roe’s “Usable GUI Design: A Quick Guide” nicely summarizes some of the most useful ideas in user interface design. His 5 major points are:
0) The user is not “using” your application, rather getting their work done with the help of your application.
1) Fitt’s law: big stuff close to your mouse is easier to click on.
2) Avoid unnecessary interference with your user.
3) Use the power of the computer to be helpful to the user. Don’t burdon with mundane tasks.
4) Make items easy to distinguish and find.
I also think that saving state is a very great feature that could improve many applications. Ben mentions this under his point 3, but I just wanted to emphasize that saving state is very important. Some of my favorite applications do this well (MATLAB, UltraEdit, Firefox with SessionSaver) once it is setup, but I think it should be the default!
