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Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

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Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#101

Post by leakycap »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #67
guappa wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah most designers are bad at their job. Doesn't mean design can't be done properly.

Maybe before I die I will catch a glimpse of this mythical creature.

If you haven't met a good designer and have been working in any industry more than a few years, maybe you don't know what you're looking for.

Design is everywhere in your life & career & and you'd be lost without it.

Perhaps you need to learn what design is, so you can start to notice it around you. Then, you'll be able to put that knowledge to work yourself and might become the mythical creature you desire to see in the world.

Look up the Joshua Tree principle - I recommend Robyn Williams book series "for Non-Designers" get one that interests you and open your world up!

Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#102

Post by leakycap »

dimitrisnl wrote: post #83
keyle wrote: post #17

As a designer first turned developers in the early 2000, I beg of you to learn the gestalt. Frameworks, languages, computers, come and go, but the human body doesn't change and the knowledge I have in design, I carry every day and have barely changed over the years. Sure there are new patterns now... "hamburger buttons" and swiping, but the logic remains the same. Human's don't change quickly. They discover things th…

Any good book recommendations?

Robin Williams - any of her books with "For non-Designers" in the title, even if it is old, it is gold

Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#103

Post by xandrius »

Valk3_ wrote: post #90
keyle wrote: post #17

As a designer first turned developers in the early 2000, I beg of you to learn the gestalt. Frameworks, languages, computers, come and go, but the human body doesn't change and the knowledge I have in design, I carry every day and have barely changed over the years. Sure there are new patterns now... "hamburger buttons" and swiping, but the logic remains the same. Human's don't change quickly. They discover things th…

How do you become good at this? Is it simply practising doing UI/UX interfaces over and over and over and over until you get it? Do you have some specific advice on how to get "there" faster? I recently stumbled across this Refactoring UI book[1], heard it's sort of popular, know if it's any good? [1] https://www.refactoringui.com/

Doing more certainly help, especially doing it more but deliberately. Trying new ways, getting feedback and repeat.

Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#104

Post by naich »

renerick wrote: post #98

I would argue that the second screenshot with redesigned Lighthouse is slightly worse that the "old" design - the vertical ruler between the sidebar and the content is gone, making page structure less pronounced - the redesigned dropdown menu has no borders or shadows and blends with the primary background - the redesigned dropdown menu lost the little dot which highlighted currently selected option, replacing it wit…

It's also far more difficult to read the numbers relating to the items in the drop down menu. You have to make an effort to track to the right with your eyes to make sure you are in the same row, whereas before the number was right next to the item. There is no need to have the numbers aligned because they are not for comparison.

Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#106

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

blauditore wrote: post #78

Note that good-looking doesn't necessarily translate into well-usable. The examples of alignment and icon weight are more on the side of aesthetics. If there's too much consistency, e.g. everything aligned in the same color with same weight and similar icons, it gets hard to quickly orient on the page and find things. This seems to be a common oversight, even by large companies. Visual "breaks", such as color changes…

This is true. Also, over time, well-usable but not exactly the best looking can become the "standard" for good-looking after a while because the design becomes so ubiquitous. You could easily make a beautiful or good looking suite of airplane controls (call it a "rebrand"), but most pilots would probably call it disgusting because it violates the common standards and aesthetics that they rely on.

Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#107

Post by kannanvijayan »

keyle wrote: post #17

As a designer first turned developers in the early 2000, I beg of you to learn the gestalt. Frameworks, languages, computers, come and go, but the human body doesn't change and the knowledge I have in design, I carry every day and have barely changed over the years. Sure there are new patterns now... "hamburger buttons" and swiping, but the logic remains the same. Human's don't change quickly. They discover things th…

There's a risk of misaligned perspectives here.

What you've called out is meaningful, but it includes an implied requirement that you're not spelling out: the time and effort and attention to detail, along with the history of experience, to really apply the principles you are talking about to a project.

When I read the main article, I interpreted it from my perspective. I'm mostly a systems person. I can appreciate the points you mentioned, but I don't have those other implied things that are prerequisites for applying those concepts effectively.

Without rules of thumb like these, the UIs I design end up looking like grade school collages. Building UIs that make people _feel good_ when using them is not my core competency. I'm just looking for a baseline level of quality.

I believe there are two cohorts here: the people who want to make UIs that are beautiful, and the people who need to make UIs that are not hot garbage.. and we're reading the article from our respective perspectives.

Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#108

Post by seaotta »

benrutter wrote: post #49

The books referenced in the article look great, but mostly seem to cost around $100 each which seems a lot to me compared to reference books in other areas (the O'Reilly one being the obvious exception since it just costs the same as other O'Reilly books) Anyone have recommendations for UI/UX books for a more modest budget?

[dead]

Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#109

Post by eviks »

fifticon wrote: post #71
Frieren wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "hamburger buttons" I work on a desktop PC and "hamburger buttons" frustrate me beyond reason, in the same way that many other "modern" designs. I understand that cost benefit of having just one implementation for mobile and desktop. But it is still annoying. > Frameworks, languages, computers, come and go, but the human body doesn't change and the knowledge I have in design, I carry every day and have barely chang…

I mourn that the scrollbar has been hunted to extinction, even on windows 11 desktop. Windows explorer slowly starts to behave like a web page app. If you enable many columns in the explorer file view, this design is bonkers: To navigate those columns, you need the horisontal scrollbar. But modern design lunacy dictates that this scrollbar must be INVISIBLE. So you have to guess where it should be, and wave your mous…

> Or if there is another way

Of course there is a much better way for all your troubles! Window move: hold a modifier and click&drag anywhere in the window area instead of wasting time precision hunting the titlebar. Window resize: same, use a big 30%-window-width area close to the border instead of hunting for those few pixels of an actual resizable border Horizontal scroll (though strange, Win 11 explorer has horizontal scrollbar immediately visible, though maybe that's a config?): hold a modifier and use the more convenient mouse wheel (or use a window manager with shortcuts or visual grid) None of that, of course, is part of your unhelpful OS

> But modern design lunacy dictates that this scrollbar must be INVISIBLE.

In a real modern design there is no lunacy as wide/tall scrollbar is mostly a space waste as you have better control options, and narrow/short ones are still that, but also unergonomic to use. So you'd have a wide/tall invisible one, which in those smaller % of cases you need them would become visible, but still wide/tall ones

> I, director Skinner and Homer's dad did not get the memo.

That's unfortunate indeed that the bad old ways of window management and scrolling persist for so long and the better ways aren't integrated in the OS

Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces

#110

Post by danaris »

leakycap wrote: post #101
MarcelOlsz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe before I die I will catch a glimpse of this mythical creature.

If you haven't met a good designer and have been working in any industry more than a few years, maybe you don't know what you're looking for. Design is everywhere in your life & career & and you'd be lost without it. Perhaps you need to learn what design is, so you can start to notice it around you. Then, you'll be able to put that knowledge to work yourself and might become the mythical creature you desire to see in…

I mean, for a start, literally every human-made object is designed. It may be designed poorly, or designed purely for function, but every one is designed. The pen you use to write notes with, the sticky notes you write on, the traffic cones blocking off the open manhole on the way to work, the manhole cover lying nearby...all of those are designed.

Design isn't just "making things look nice". It's every thought that goes into the structure, function, and aesthetic of an object, whether physical or digital.

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