I remember seeing photos of the Audi Q7 before it hit the roads and thinking it looked pretty good. It looked big but not monstrous. Sadly within 2 seconds of having seen one in the flesh I changed my mind and realised it was monstrous. The Audi Q7 is an ugly automobile.
Along comes the above design, a “concept” called the Audi Cross Coupe quattro, and I am thinking it looks terrible. Audi design in general has gone off the rails in the past few years. The A4 went backwards and the A6 just looks dull. The only car worth looking at in the Audi range is the A5.
This is not about “easy” vs. “hard”, which are clumsy, imprecise words for describing a user interface. Easy what? Easy to learn? Easy to understand? Easy to remember how to use? Easy meaning “simple”?
There’s nothing complex or confusing about iCal’s event entry UI. And with specific fields for each item of data, it is more obvious than Backpack’s — but only for a first-time user, which is the wrong case to optimize for.
I love reading that. That optimising for first-time-users is wrong (generally.) I am in the middle of designing an RSS interface and am hitting this wall a lot. I put in UI elements that are aimed at fast, efficient, repeated use but which are difficult to figure out on first glance. They take a bit of learning.
In this short-attention span economy though immediate comprehension has some value. Striking the balance between grabbing a users’ attention and keeping them is difficult.
User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky is a worthwhile read though there are better books on the subject out there (e.g. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug (which Joel recommends too.)) The information is good though I find Joel’s tone to be grating. This is the same Joel of Joel on Software fame and as I have said before the man has good things to say but says them in the most awful ways. Arrogant is the main word that comes to mind. Steve Krug in comparison respects users and avoids calling them morons at every turn.
What Joel has to say on the program model vs. the user model is very helpful though. If that is all you get from the book then you are doing well.
So if you have an hour or two free (the book is short) and have read the other books on the subject give Joel’s a shot.
I don’t often read technical books but thought the thin, interesting and good looking Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug would be a good read. A few hours later all the good reviews were proven right. This is an excellent book for everybody involved in user interface design, especially for websites. It is short and too the point with a very friendly tone that is not patronising. It covers a lot of common sense and a lot of usability you may have already read by the likes of Jakob Nielsen and others. But it does it in a thorough and consistent fashion that is well worth reading again.
It also goes a bit into usability testing. Getting people to sit down and test your products. What I really found interesting was how Steve pushed the idea of testing early and often. This reminds me of agile programming and even seems to complement it. Get people in to do usability testing of your product on a regular basis and without the usual usability testing overhead. Not too serious but still useful is the tone he advises. It got me thinking that we could easily fit it into our two-week iteration development cycle and use it for feedback and priority setting.
Hopefully after a few months I’ll be able to report back on how that goes.
Do give the book a read. It is quick and easy but imparts a lot of good information.
