Question

A while back I read (before I lost it) a great book called GUI Bloopers which was full of examples of bad GUI design but also full of useful tidbits like Don’t call something a Dialog one minute and a Popup the next.

What top tips would you give for designing/documenting a GUI? It would be particularly useful to hear about widgets you designed to cram readable information into as little screen real-estate as possible.

I’m going to roll this off with one of my own: avoid trees (e.g. Swing’s JTree) unless you really can’t avoid it, or have a unbounded hierarchy of stuff. I have found that users don’t find them intuitive and they are hard to navigate and filter.

PS. I think this question differs from this one as I’m asking for generalist tips

Answer 1

well I personally follow these simple rules:

• be consistent throughout the application DO NOT CHANGE BEHAVIOUR/LAYOUT
• information flow: from top to bottom from left to right (in western-countries)
• not too much info on a page (like a ppt-presentation)
• big letters (so old people can read them too)
• KISS (whoever can use a videorecorder can use this page/form/etc.)
• use relaxing colors like blue, green, etc. (not bright-red or neon-pink)
• Structure (can change of course but as a first draft mostly it is):
  • top -> navigation/menu
  • left -> navigation/info
  • middle -> content
  • bottom -> status
  • bottom right -> buttons