A Documentation - GUI Design - Part 4

Kill the habit of rushing into design!

We will start with websites, those which lacks user friendly navigation as well as functionality, their by killing the usability standards, so obviously the site becomes a nightmare for the end user. I would like to share the points written by Mr.Jakob Nielson’s article on ‘The top 10 web design mistakes of 1999’, though he wrote that article 10 years back, down the lane at 2009, still we see websites which consistently showcase the 10 mistakes he mentioned.

The point is people often ignore the principles of good GUI design, once we ignore the step1 ultimately we lost the plot on how to serve and what to serve in the first place!

A good GUI design should be a intuitive one, if a site’s purpose intended was to communicate the information of a certain commodity, where as the info is hidden beneath a complicated menu level to access, what’s the point? The design should make it explicit that the information should be viewable or accessible upfront. This is one among the several bad design aspects which kills the user experience.

So the above mentioned are good too many valid reasons, to call a design just bad!

Let’s see where good design starts:

In order to avoid the basic mistakes, we have to make our basics right before we jump start a design process. Even if you are going to design a small job which is chicken shit for ya, sit back and do a small homework before jump start. If we can clearly answer the following 4 Basic questions, then we are good to go!

1. Do you know your end-user?
2. Do you have the content organized?
3. How you are going to present it?
4. Can you start the design now?

End User Matters the most

Of course first thing you should know in GUI design is who is your end user, is the target audience is young masses or the mature people. What is the geography of my end-user, is he from U.S.A or U.K or from Asia, again if asia which part of asia? These information are very crucial for a designer, unless you know these facts you will end up putting a typography and its size in a website which couldn’t be readable which is meant for a older or mature audience!

Organizing the content

Once you know how much content is available, it will be easier for you to analyze and decide upon on how to present the same in a appropriate manner to the user without much confusion. Furthermore it helps you to determine the choice of navigation or the menu system, as you just understood what comes first and what comes last from the organized content. This particular aspect will be very effective when you plan for dynamic websites. You don’t have to update the all of A-Z, just locate the exact page from the stack of the organized content and update that alone.

Present it for yourself first

If you have answered first 2 questions, you should be comfortable now to answer question #3.

Exactly, If you can see beforehand what your end-user will see and suffer looking at the GUI which you did, probably you are in the right directions, so accommodate missing and address problem areas which already shows up even in the stage of mock-up / wireframe stage.

Now you are Good to go!

More over if you like to know more on Good Principles on GUI design, you should read this nice book, ‘User Interface Design for Mere Mortals’ by Eric Butow.

More to come…

A Documentation - GUI Design - Part 3

Having said that good design and bad design; No body pre-dominantly like do a design which is good or bad. Over a period of time people did their design chores knowingly or unknowingly at the given time and space of requirements with their so called class room expertise or by their domain expertise.
I would like to put this way of the GUI Evaluation in a funny way:
• Developers who vissioned the GUI themselves were the designers.
• Creative people peeked in to see, how they can maneuver the GUI and add value in terms of aesthetics.
• Forums evolved: where developers wannabe and designers wannabe debated and asked too many questions to settle for their career.
• Clients / Half baked who wanted good returns, by mixing a domain of all the above mentioned three categories.
Nice logic indeed in a business perspective. But really it is not that simple of a GUI development.
The need for the GUI comes in first place arises only when something needs to be automated, make it easily operable and eliminate traditional hassles. Given the scenario the R&D has its own sweet time
which do a evaluation and gives a workflow which again by passes the awesome 4 some points which we discussed earlier. Then only the actual development starts.
Having done all the homework and started developing a GUI and ended in nightmare is punishable at the maximum possible.


Let’s see how the end user marked them good and bad.
More to come…

A Documentation - GUI Design - Part 2

Fine, am not talking about the speed with which a application boots up, of course it is one among the different factors which attributes to a successful UI design. Let us see what are the other factors which makes a successful UI design.
• Your actual end user who is going to experience the UI (May be a Windows 9x or a Vista or a Mac user)
• User Friendliness: How you arranged your menus, how many clicks the user has to go through UI to get his information?, Is there any hidden menu in the hierarchy of the sitemap?, Does a Flash animation in the site helps him or distracts him?, Does the content spread is visible enough to the user or the menu and your design kills the content?
• Standard Compliance: Do you follow industry standards?, Addressed usability issues in your design ?
• Do you like what you do: Just because simply the client wanted , will you add an graphic element to a nice design and compromise your moral ethics as a designer?
Put together, Designing a standard GUI requires:
• Understanding your end user
• Make the UI user friendly
• Yes Rules have to be broken, yet but follow standards to an extent, coz people don’t change overnight and give up habits.
• Honestly at the end, you really like it yourself in the first place?

Next we will see, how someone differentiates design and calls a good design or a bad design in relation to the above mentioned four criteria.
More to come…

A Documentation - GUI Design - Part 1

Way back in 1930 Vannevar Bush visioned "memex", that is the start of GUI.

Ahem.. Am searchin as well as i need a screenshot of the memex, If you come across kindly send it to me, will reward you nicely!

I started my career on computer with a Windows version 3.1, can you belive it? For a human being who struggle to decide and settle, whether for XP or Vista, please find attached the GUI of Windows 3.1 screenshot. I used to work on Aldus PageMaker, (Bought by Adobe and ReChristened "Page Maker" in 1994, now become InDesign)hopping on a machine which came with a MMX Processor 200Mhz, with a RAM of 16MB, not sure of HD capacity(Must be less than 1Gig), then Corel Draw Software with the balloons Splash screen used to launch in a lightning speed.

Does your current version of Illustrator, Corel Draw or Photoshop launches in 5 - 10 seconds? Do you like what you do?

In this series am going to write about GUI, its evaluation and its current form. Am not a great GUI expert, but still this subject fascinates me. By doing a study and writing on this helps me understand better and better of a UI Design, so do i seek, whoever read this might learn one or two from this documentation. I do a lot of study and research before i write, if you got a problem with a fact which mentioned here and defer from it, feel free to argue. Love to hear, debate and update facts.

More to come..
Hammere'd