Designing a GUI [closed]

Answer 1

The applications I developed get clicked thousands of times per hour, so everything comes down to efficiency. I like to think of it as a sort of currency with which you can generate lots of useful axioms:

If it saves a click, +1.

If it costs a click, -1.

If the user wastes time figuring out how it works, -1. (Most custom UI elements)

If it is fundamentally intuitive, +1. (Coverflow)

If it saves first-time users a click, +1. (Wizards)

If it costs long-term users a click, -1. (Wizards)

(Thus why you have to make sure your keyboard shortcuts and tab orders make sense.)

Etc.

Etc.

Everything gets subjectively weighted and tallied and you compromise where you have to. Ultimately, it might be a naive philosophy, but its served me fairly well. Extrapolate as you see fit.

Answer 2

Have you read http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx ?

Or read the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interface_guidelines it contains links to some HIG

Answer 3

This may be helpful: best-practices-principles-for-gui-design

Answer 4

There are a few UI patterns presented on the UI patterns site that you may find useful

Generally if you are designing form for windows follow the various microsoft guidelines.

One principal I keep in mind is use existing patterns of behaviour (double click to execute/activate an item etc.) as people already know these.

Answer 5

The first thing you need to do is get out of your developer-point-of-view. We tend to think in terms of forms, controls, buttons, lists, grids etc. And this tends to push us to solutions that are not always optimal for the user.

Users don't want to use our software. (except when you're programming games) They just want to get stuff done. So when desinging UI and user interactions it makes sense to start from there. Write down what a user wants to do with your software. Think about how a user would go about doing these things and what your application could do to make things easier.

Try to work with different tools than you use for programming. These make you think in UI widgets again. Start with a pencil and a piece of paper to sketch things, also try to think about the behaviour as well as the layout etc. If you've got a clear picture of what you want to build you can start thinking about how you're going to build it. That's when the widgets, buttons and pages come in.

Answer 6

Joel Spolsky has a pretty good high level design tips:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000057.html

Above that, the biggest thing is just trying something out, making mockups. Maybe initial ones on paper, but at some point just try to put together a GUI without hooking up the code behind. See what you think, try some changes, ask other people for their opinions, and just experiment. Best design technique is to get feedback from people, preferably from the target audience if possible.