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General Software Discussion / Re: Examples of great, intuitive, clever UI design?
« on: May 23, 2016, 05:01 PM »
Well, if you are interested in 3D, I hope you have had a look at SketchUp. It has a very innovative UI that shows a lot of attention to ease of use. There's a free trial which should be good enough for you to check out the UI.
I'm going to throw in some general comments, since UI design is kind of my thing.
The good news about user experience is that watching a relatively small number of people (5-10) use your app will catch a large percentage of any user interface errors. You will see people make the same mistakes time and again, and it will be easy to find the low-hanging fruit for improvement. But be prepared to set up some sessions where you watch people work with your app and learn from their mistakes.
I'm going to throw in some general comments, since UI design is kind of my thing.
- You will get the UI wrong. You will. No matter how many examples you look at, or cool ideas you hear about. Just accept it now. The only way to get your UI right is to watch people actually use it to do stuff. And the only way to do THAT is to build it wrong and get it into people's hands, then see where they get stuck. So by all means start with the best examples you can find. But don't stop there.
- Make really sure that hiding complexity is actually serving your users. If you look at most 3D design packages, they have a fairly complex UI, but that's because the task itself is complex. An intuitive UI is the opposite of training; the simpler UI, the lower the learning curve. In the world of commercial software this is usually considered a good trade, since people are impatient. But as the task increases in complexity, the trade-off provides less value. A jumbo jet has a complex UI, but that's OK because you don't really want somebody flying one who hasn't be thoroughly trained. :)
- A lot of programmers tend to think of their UI in terms of features. "My program has 534 features and the UI must make sure the user can access all of them." But users do not want features. They want to do cool stuff, using your software if it will help them. In other words, users care about tasks, because tasks lead to outcomes, and they are after the outcomes. UI design is about understanding what your user is trying to accomplish, and then building a pathway to that accomplishment through the forest of features you are providing. Where does your user spend most of their time? What are the tasks they do every time they run your program? What are the tasks they complete once in a blue moon? Prepare to optimize and polish the everyday stuff, and provide guidance on the blue moon stuff, since most users won't remember as well how to do it.
The good news about user experience is that watching a relatively small number of people (5-10) use your app will catch a large percentage of any user interface errors. You will see people make the same mistakes time and again, and it will be easy to find the low-hanging fruit for improvement. But be prepared to set up some sessions where you watch people work with your app and learn from their mistakes.