Women in Technology

Article:		Designing a Great UI the Aqua Way
Subject:		Yes, but...
Date:		2001-11-19 10:31:00
From:		adamrice
While I felt that all the points in the article were well made, it seems to be picking the low-hanging fruit. The tricky parts of interface design are the less tangible ones. Do you present a feature through a button, menu item, whatever? Are some options even worth presenting, or should they be hard-coded, out of reach from the user (tough call, Dock positioning is an example of leaving a feature in without presenting a ready way to manipulate it)? How do you organize different-but-related features? MS's Word 4 was notorious for its disorganized design, that placed table-related menu items under three different menus, with multiple layers of dialog boxes to drill through to access some features. Less is more in interface design. You don't want to load every interface element with too much functionality, but often you can use one widget to do more than one thing. The play/pause toggle in iTunes is an obvious example. Graying-out a "next" button when there is no "next" is another good example that isn't always followed. Grayed-out icons in BBEdit to represent an unsaved file are nice (if you notice them and know how to interpret them).

Showing messages 1 through 1 of 1.

• Yes, but...I agree
  2001-11-19 17:26:24  Alan Graham | [View]
  
  
  I absolutely agree. The problem is condensing all these elements into 1600 words or less. When I began writing the column I thought I would simply cover the technical aspects of UI design, assuming that many people were well versed in design...and then I realized after looking at many current applications...that building for Aqua is like landing on the moon for the first time. How do you describe the scope of something so new and unique...to an audience that has never been there before? Never in history have developers had to meet such high standards. Apple has really raised the bar here. This article was an attempt at bridging the gap between philosophy and common sense. If this were a book on Aqua design...I would elaborate on many of the subjects you mentioned. But this piece is really focused on those new to design...to give them some basics to think about.
  
  BTW...the iTunes example is a very good one. A play/pause easily replaces an additional button for Stop...giving you similar functionality while simplifying the UI.
  
  Thanks for the reply. Excellent points.