User Interface Design For Programmers

It's easy because you usually don't need algorithms more sophisticated than how to center one rectangle in another. It's straightforward because when you make a mistake, you immediately see it and can correct it. It's fun, because the results of your work are immediately visible. You feel like you are sculpting the program directly.

I think most programmers' fear of UI programming comes from their fear of doing UI design. They think that UI design is like graphics design: the mysterious process by which creative, latte-drinking, all-dressed-in-black people with interesting piercings produce cool looking artistic stuff. Programmers see themselves as analytic, logical thinkers: strong at reasoning, weak on artistic judgment. So they think they can't do UI design.

Actually, I've found UI design to be quite easy and quite rational. It's not a mysterious matter that requires a degree from an art school and a penchant for neon-purple hair. There is a rational way to think about user interfaces with some simple, logical rules that you can apply anywhere to improve the interfaces of the programs you work on.

This book is not “Zen and the Art of UI Design.” It's not art, it's not Buddhism, it's just a set of rules. A way of thinking rationally and methodically. This book is designed for programmers. I assume you don't need instructions for how to make a menu bar; rather, you need to think about what to put in your menu bar (or whether to have one at all). You'll learn the one primary axiom that guides all good UI design, and some of the corollaries. We'll look at some examples from real life, modern GUI programs. When you're done, you'll know about 85% of what it takes to be a significantly better user interface designer.

Contents

• Foreword by Dave Winer, Founder, Userland Software
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: The Perils of Multithreaded Programming
• Chapter 2: Figuring out what they expected
• Chapter 3: Choices
• Chapter 4: Affordances and Metaphors
• Chapter 5: Broken Metaphors
• Chapter 6: Consistency and other hobgoblins
• Chapter 7: Putting the User In Charge
• Chapter 8: Design for Extremes
• Chapter 9: People Can't Read
• Chapter 10: People Can't Control the Mouse
• Chapter 11: People Can't Remember
• Chapter 12: The Process of Designing A Product
• Chapter 13: Those Pesky Usability Tests
• Chapter 14: Relativity Understanding UI Time Warps
• Chapter 15: But...How Do It Know?
• Chapter 16: Tools of the Trade
• Index