Designing for iPad: Reality Check

Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines: About the Guidelines for Creating Great Mac OS X Apps Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines describes the characteristics of the OS X platform and the guidelines and principles that help you design an outstanding user interface and user experience for your Mac app. Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines does not describe how to implement your designs in code. When you’re ready to code, start by reading Mac App Programming Guide. At a Glance Aqua is the overall appearance and behavior of OS X. Interface Builder (a graphical UI editor in Xcode) is the best way to begin building an Aqua-compliant user interface. Great Apps Begin with an Understanding of the Fundamentals Before you begin designing your app, you need to get a feel for the OS X environment. Most people are not acquainted with the principles of human interface design, but they can tell when apps follow the guidelines and when they don’t. People Expect a Great User Experience that Integrates OS X Technologies OS X users have high standards for the apps they run. How to Use This Document

My five commandments for wireframing « Boagworld Design: The estimated time to read this article is 5 minutes I am a fundamentalist when it comes to wireframing. Its almost like a religious furore. However, I am not writing this to convince you of the value of wireframing. Thou shall not neglect to wireframeThou shall not wireframe aloneThou shall not be afraidThou shall start with pen and paperThou shall test thy wireframes Let our sermon for the day begin with “Thou shall not neglect to wireframe”. Thou shall not neglect to wireframe From my perspective things start to go wrong when you decide to skip wireframing. This is such a small change it doesn’t need wireframing The client won’t pay for wireframes There isn’t time to wireframe The problem is that these objections simply are not true. Thou shall not wireframe alone Another big danger I have observed in wireframing is what one of our developers calls the ‘chinese whispers effect‘. I believe the best way to overcome this problem is to wireframe as a group. Thou shall not be afraid

The condescending UI I have a kneejerk reaction to most modern computer user interfaces (also, all microwave user interfaces). I've used plenty of excuses over the years: my "eye for design," my love of minimalism, a sense of utility. Today, I finally put my finger on it, and it's not just a desire for the-computer-as-pure-machine, or a spartan aesthetic. Growing up I was always very small for my age. My problem with many modern UIs is that they never get past the telling phase. An example of this is the dramatic, quasi-utilitarian animated transition. But it's not just functionality, there's something deeper that bugs me, about the decorations themselves. And of course, there is the transgression of the century: Apple's downward spiral into overt 1:1 metaphors. For reference, here's where we started: Oh, how "far" we've come! Of course, seeking out an aesthetically pleasing interface seems a nice goal. Related Items haiku microsoft apple ui user interface beos

Designing for Social Interaction It took both the telephone and the mobile phone 15 years to amass 100 million users, but Facebook did it in 9 months. We see more and more people becoming connected on online social networks, and it seems our networks are growing exponentially. But the reality is, social networks rarely add to our number of connections. We’ve already met almost all the people we’re connected to on social networks. We’re already connected to these people offline. Social networks simply make the connections visible. The average number of friends on Facebook is 130, and many users have many more.2 Yet despite having hundreds of friends, most people on Facebook only interact regularly with 4 to 7 people,3 and for 90% of Facebook users, 20% of their friends account for 70% of all interactions.4 We also see this with phone usage. We also have varied interactions with the people we’re not as close to. We have many diverse relationships with the people in our lives, yet the web doesn’t support this very well.

Cocoia Blog 10 Marketing Resources Every App Should Provide | Web.AppStorm This is for all you web app developers out there. There are ten resources every app should make easily available to members of the press, including bloggers, via their website. These are resources for people interested in sharing information, reviews or thoughts about your web app — with a few being tremendously helpful for your users. If you offer a web app or service, you need to check this list to see what kind of marketing you’re missing. Why? These are the top ten application and service resources, for both web and desktop, I find commonly missing. I would like to point out that this is coming from someone who evaluates 15-20 or more applications and services each week. 1. It might seem obvious, but a [relatively] high resolution logo is often hard to find when I’m reviewing an app or service. Logo The typical blogger almost certainly won’t contact you for a quality logo and will use something crappy, reflecting poorly on everyone. 2. Icon 3. Descriptions 4. Video Demonstration 5. 6. 7.

Faceted Finding with Super-Powered Breadcrumbs Most of the today’s finding interfaces do not support integrated finding effectively, often creating disparate search and browse user interfaces that confound people with a jumble of controls competing for their attention. In this article, I propose the Integrated Faceted Breadcrumb (IFB) design that integrates the power of faceted refinement with the intuitive query expansion afforded by browse. Although other breadcrumb-based finding interfaces currently exist, they fall short of expectations by ignoring design best practices. At best, the breadcrumb is stuck in a role of a side-kick, forced to eke out meager screen real estate along-side more powerful finding controls. In contrast, breadcrumb is the superhero of the IFB design, dealing a decisive blow to many usability issues that plague today’s finding interfaces. The Challenge of Integrated Finding Unfortunately, most sites today do not integrate faceted search and browse effectively. Figure 1. Figure 2. 1. Figure 3. Figure 4. 2. 3.

Guidelines for Writing a Good About Page The About page—just about every single website has one. The About page is where site users go to learn more about the site they’re on. If you want to convert visitors to users, capture opportunities to work with people, and give your regular users a deeper appreciation of what your site does, a well written About page is your ticket. The About Page’s Mission The About page is the section of a website where people go to find out about the website they’re on. Readers will visit this section for many reasons and with various questions they want answered, but your objective is the same: to inform them why they are on the site or why they should be on the site. Who Reads About Pages? It’s helpful to define the audience you’re writing your About page for. Group 1: First Time Visitors This group may have been referred to your site by a friend, or may have stumbled upon one of your web pages through a search engine result or social media service. Group 2: Regular Users Who are you? Who are you?

Log in or sign up? - Leah Culver's Blog "Sometimes I put my log in information into the register fields." "Me too! I hate that not only do I feel stupid, I have to retype everything again." For one of my side projects, Leafy Chat, we have just added the concept of user accounts. This includes the need for registration and log in (as well as log out and forgot password and so on). Leafy Chat only requires an email address and a password for both registration and log in, so it would be great to have some clever way to have both forms on the homepage. Some things to consider: Users only need to register once but will log in many times.It's really important to get new users and registration should be dead simple.Users will accidentally use the wrong form and should not be punished by having to re-enter their information.The two forms, register and log in, require different validation. Another project that I've designed also has an email/password registration system. I love this form because it is so straightforward. Log in Sign up