18
2005
Learning the Art of GUI Design…
An article by Glen
Like many of you, I spend the vast majority of my time working on backend code. Hacking infrastructure libraries, EJBs, web framework code and all the unit tests that live along side them.
One thing I don’t have, and have never really had, is any real sense of GUI design. Even in my VB days, I was the king of the FrankenGUI. But since getting so pumped about SWT (after reading the excellent The Definitive Guide to SWT and JFace) and then finding the most incredible GUI tool on the planet (SWT Designer) – I’ve come to realise I’m learning all the tech of GUI design without the softer “arty” design and usability skills.
To that end, I’ve bought a copy of GUI Bloopers by Jeff Johnson. Despite the terrible name, this book is actually designed for programmers without GUI skills to learn the basics of usable design. Don’t be turned off by the title, there is a gold mine of info in here, and I’m really excited about learning some basic design skills that can help sharpen my new GUI passion.
Anyone else got any good resources/ideas for learning the skills of a slick and usable GUI design?
About the Author: Glen Smith
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Glen Smith
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I provide a set of Don’t and Do’s that address the most frequent visual design problems I’ve seen in design reviews. See “First Aid for Swing” at http://www.jgoodies.com/articles/
I like Jeff’s Bloopers book too and often recommend it. Professionals just need to read the contents and check back if they don’t know/remeber a blooper.
I can wholeheartly recommend the thin book “Designing Visual Interfaces” by Kevin Mullet & Darrel Sano. They describe almost everything necessary to design well.
If it comes to design with an emphasis on usability Joel Spolsky’s “User Interface Design for Programmers” is useful and fun to read.
Karsten, thanks for the resources!
It’s weird, but I was just watching your talk on GUI Design at JavaOne Online yesterday (they still haven’t put up your data binding talk yet – which I’m very interested in exploring).
Awesome presentation by the way. Very accessible.
For others who posted comments to this entry yesterday, a blog crash yesterday took them out without saving. I’m reposting those contributions here from my email notifier.
Comment from Anonymous on 19 Apr 2005 15:25:59 EST in response to Learning the Art of GUI Design…
Johnson is a good start for a “thou shalt/thou shalt not” casting of some of the issues involved in writing GUIs. Check out Alan Cooper’s About Face 2.0 and Larry Constantine’s Software for Use for more diving/surfacing potential. Also start to notice what makes a usable or non-usable GUI when YOU are the user.
Comment from Marty Backe on 19 Apr 2005 10:29:47 EST in response to Learning the Art of GUI Design…
I second your thoughts on GUI Bloopers. One of the best books on GUI considerations that I’ve read.
Comment from Tom C. on 19 Apr 2005 06:51:50 EST in response to Learning the Art of GUI Design…
I haven’t read it, but Joel Sposky’s book on ui design is very popular. If you look for it on Amazon, you’ll find references to other books, so even if you don’t get Joel’s book, it can help find others.
Comment from Anonymous on 19 Apr 2005 06:50:43 EST in response to Learning the Art of GUI Design…
http://developer.apple.com/ue/
Comment from Scott Delap on 18 Apr 2005 23:25:27 EST in response to Learning the Art of GUI Design…
Glen, you might want to go back through some of the posts on my site http://www.clientjava.com. I’ve posted a number of links to sites over the last 6 months that have examples of visual GUI patterns.