[AccessD] User interface

I like the Windows Small phone design. It is a lot cleaner that I would have
suspected. I am also am very familiar with the Windows so I would hardly be
a person to be predisposed to make an objective or negative opinion.

OTOH, design and layout of an application is as important as the design and
development of the code. The average user just does not care what is
under-the-hood. Pretty is always most important...think no further than our
obsession with models.

Most of my work is with web sites and there are always very basic
rules...like everything must read from top-left to bottom-right. (European
standard) Most sites work with the two or three-column design...all have
headers and footers. After that, there are many more abstract and fresh
layouts.

When surfing, everyone knows when they have landed on a corporate or a geek
or a store or an application site. It is all about the layout.

Companies like MS, Apple, Google and even Linux have spent as much money on
their product UI designs as on the coding. In the Linux world there are two
schools of design, the Gnome (apple like) and KDE (windows like) interfaces.
In recent years a great deal of study has gone into just how people
logically (intuitively) think. 

The Apple type layouts assume people think in specific logical patterns and
clutter just confuses. Less is best. Single forms but more effort is placed
on transitions, showing depth and graphics. 

Windows type layouts have everything of an application shown...if there are
50 choices there are 50 buttons. There are no transitions as a feature is
either off or on, there are no rounded curves and there are no shadows.
Everything runs from a single desktop. 

It is so personal as to which interface is more intuitional but the current
trends are towards the "Apple/Gnome" like interfaces...of course that trend
or fashion could change.

For me, it is what ever the user wants. Right now Gnome UI is running two to
one, in popularity and finally the new Windows phone interface is very lean,
similar but different (more block layout) to the Gnome uncluttered
interface.

Jim
   

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2011 6:51 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] User interface

Hi Arthur and Jim

Really? I find GMail to represent an horror example of bad (or lacking)
design - with a mess of colours, buttons and pop-ups everywhere, yellow and
green bars, boring fonts. No style.
Contrary to this, the redesigned live.com (hotmail etc.) is a good example
on how very similar pages can appear much lighter and neater by use of a
simple tricks like careful colouring and shading, stylish fonts, and just a
few frames (with right-angled corners; round corners should be forbidden by
law!).

Currently Microsoft is way ahead of anyone else regarding design with
Windows Phone 7 and now Windows 8 as the stellar examples of the Metro
project. Even the ribbon has proved right for me as I'm now able to use
PowerPoint which I previously stayed off. Now it is even fun! That tells it
all.

The interesting and encouraging part is, that this is the result of hard
work by several teams of very skilled and brave persons, not just some fancy
ideas. They are being bashed from many sides which - could one believe -
want Windows 3.11 and Word 2.0 back. MS management deserves credit for
having promoted design to have top priority.

/gustav


>>> fuller.artful at gmail.com 02-09-2011 21:28:01 >>>
I think of Google as the UI par excellence. Lean and clean and decidedly not
noisy. I admire their design sense immensely.

A.


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