[MUD-Dev] MUD client popularity

[Edward Glowacki]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 20:33, Brian Hook wrote:
> On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 11:16:44 -0500, Edward Glowacki wrote:

>> Very few programmers have UI skills in the same league as the
>> average interaction designer of a similar experience level.

> In my experience, "UI specialists" generally, well, suck.  They're
> not rigorous in their approach and often feel that UI design is an
> artistic profession, when it is clearly an engineering/psychology
> avocation.

Sounds like artists trying to do UI, not UI professionals.  Same
thing as programmers trying to do UI, but where programmers focus on
power the artists focus on looking pretty.  True UI design requires
tools from several different fields: an understanding of the
underlying power available from programmers, a sense of aesthetics
from the art world, *plus*, as you mentioned, a good understanding
of psychology and a heavy dose of engineering methodology for the
test/build cycle.

> If someone is serious about designing UI, they need to read:

>   "About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design" by Cooper
>   and Reimann

>   "User Interface Design for Programmers" by the aforementioned
>   Joel Spolsky (mostly a distilled version of About Face)

>   "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman, a classic

I would add to that list:

  "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin

  "GUI Bloopers" by Jeff Johnson for some good real-world examples
  of mistakes people have made (and explanations of WHY they are
  mistakes).

And maybe:

  "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug (focused on web design, and
  short enough to be readable by managers etc. to give them an idea
  of the benefit of good UI design).

"The Inmates Are Running the Asylum : Why High Tech Products Drive
Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity" by Alan Cooper

> The #1 rule, by far, that they all try to get across is this: the
> interface should match the user's mental model, NOT the
> programmer's implementation model.

Yep, that's it. =)

-ED

--
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
A PBS mind in an MTV world.
	-- Author unknown
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