To make people happy, you have to let them feel like they are in control of
their environment. To do this, you need to correctly interpret their
actions. The interface needs to behave in the way they are expecting it to
behave.
Thus, the cardinal axiom of all user interface design:
<<<
A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the
user thought it would.
>>>
As Hillel said, everything else is commentary. All the other rules of good
UI design are just corollaries.
Joel Spolsky
"User Interface Design for Programmers - Chapter 1"
their environment. To do this, you need to correctly interpret their
actions. The interface needs to behave in the way they are expecting it to
behave.
Thus, the cardinal axiom of all user interface design:
<<<
A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the
user thought it would.
>>>
As Hillel said, everything else is commentary. All the other rules of good
UI design are just corollaries.
Joel Spolsky
"User Interface Design for Programmers - Chapter 1"
Related:
- When I was 6 and my dad brought home one of the world's first pocket
calculators, an HP-35, he tried to convince me that it had a computer inside
it.
I thought that was unlikely. All the computers on Star Trek were the size of a room and had big reel-to-reel tape recorders.... - All you need to know is the user interface. -- J. Redford
- PUI: Piglet User Interface
- for the rest of us: [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the
rest of us"] adj.
1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe {spiffy} but very overpriced products.... - for the rest of us adj.
[from the Mac slogan "The computer
for the rest of us"] 1.
Used to describe a spiffy product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe spiffy but very overpriced products.... - WYSIAYG /wiz'ee-ayg/ adj.
Describes a user interface
under which "What You See Is All You Ge
an unhappy variant of WYSIWYG. Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves, but also to lack depth... - WIMP environment n.
[acronym: `Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing
device (or Pull-down menu)'] A graphical-user-interface environment
such as X or the Macintosh interface, esp.
as described by a hacker who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior flexibility and extensibility.... - WIMP environment: n. [acronym: `Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing
device (or Pull-down menu)'] A graphical-user-interface environment
such as {X} or the Macintosh interface, esp.
as described by a hacker who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior flexibility and extensibility.... - Pencil cursors are for user-interface weenies. -- Rob MacLachla
