Design: User Interface Design

To some, user-interface (UI) design or Web design might seem like work that relies solely on creativity and seeking innovative ideas. However, you should always base your design solutions on a few rules that optimize the entire design process—such as Ben Shneiderman’s eight golden rules of user-interface design.

Shneiderman pioneered the concepts behind his eight golden rules after conducting fundamental research in the field of human-computer interaction. Although Shneiderman defined his eight golden rules back in 1985, their timelessness has ensured that they are still in use by application and Web designers all around the world.

In this article, we’ll discuss Shneiderman’s eight golden rules, and supplement them with practical tips and examples to help you apply these universal principles in your daily work as a UX designer. Read More

Here are my basic best practices for buttons:

1. Make buttons look like buttons.
2. Put buttons where users can find them.
3. Make the most important button look like it’s the most important one.
4. Put buttons in a sensible order.
5. Label buttons with what they do.
6. If users don’t want to do something, don’t have a button for it.
7. Make it harder to find destructive buttons.

Nothing particularly revolutionary there, right? Ever since the <button> tag arrived in HTML4, buttons haven’t been especially difficult to create. Despite this, it’s rather easy to find buttons that don’t comply with these basic best practices, so I’m going to dig into them a little deeper in this column. Read More

The moment that a beautifully crafted user-interface (UI) design is ready for development should be one of excitement. But too often it’s a source of friction. A poor handoff between a UI designer and a front-end developer can lead to miscommunication, discrepancies between the design and the final product, and ultimately, costly rework and delays.

A truly successful user-interface (UI) design isn’t just about pixels and prototypes; it’s about a seamless collaboration between the designer and the developer that ensures the design vision translates flawlessly into a functional product. For VPs of Engineering and product managers, this process is a critical factor in a project’s success. Read More