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Feedbackdavid@uidesign.net

Its a big issue! What does a UI Professional do with his own website?

Expectation is surely high. Most professional websites feature some wonderful graphics and clever use of frames. They have professional graphic designers and professional technical writers. So what do you expect from a guy who says he's a professional UI Designer?

The design of the site is intended to be functional. There are two functions, fast and simple for the user to navigate and fast and simple for me to maintain in my spare time.

So a few simple rules. Design is

• Document centric

Pages are

• quick to load
• not too long

Navigation is

• never more than two clicks
• plus a short scroll

uidesign.net is about Practical User Interface Design.

Focus

At uidesign.net, we want to study the processes, the strategies, the patterns and the aesthetics of User Interface Design. We want to raise UI Design to a more sophisticated level than it has been before. This site wants to be above field alignment problems, above action-object, object-action debates, above metaphor. We want to move things to a new, more practical level. We want to put some science and some repeatability into User Interface Design. To lift practical User Interface Design from the realms of "Black Magic" into a well understood discipline. To make the chance of a good UI Design so much higher.

How many software products have you seen or developed which you can truly say are usable and functinal? How many can you list that have good UI Design? How shameful are the answers? Let's face it - the UI on most software technology is awful.

I HATE SO MANY TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS. Why?

Because the UI is awful. Let's try to make it better!

Content

This site will feature a regular news and magazine style editorial. It will also feature White Papers covering work that I've been doing in User Interface Design. It works for me, so why not take the time to read it and try it?

From time to time the site will have guest White Papers from invited authors. These may be about UI Design or they may be about related topics such as High Technology Marketing, Product Definition, UI Development, Object Oriented Modelling or Psychology.

There will also be regular book reviews. Books about UI. Books about OO Development. Books about Design. Books about Psychology. Books about Marketing. If it's important to good user interface design, then it will be covered.

Finally, the ubiquitious Links page. Let's make it as good and useful as it can be. Send in your candidate links.

At uidesign.net, the focus will be on positive articles, describing ways to do things well. There are some great sites which describe and detail the negative aspects of current UI Design such as the Interface Hall of Shame. They hope to create improvements by pointing out current deficiencies. That is all very well, but it leaves open the possibility that more and more bad designs will be created and added to the list. So, uidesign.net is about emphasising the positive; helping each other out.

As an example from another field, I once saw a TV interview with a top golfing coach. He said, something like this, " I watch a lot of golfers and often when they make a bad shot, they take another swing - the what I should have done swing. If you watch my golfers, they don't do that. I teach them to take another swing after they play a good shot. Emphasise the positive. Forget the negative. Learn to get better."

Off-focus

What this site is not about is Usability as a discipline. Naturally I believe in Usability. I also believe that a good design should lead to Usability. However, I see Usability as a specialist area best left to the experts. My expertise is in software and user interface design. I will design, the Usability Experts can test my designs with proven Usability Engineering techniques and tell me how usable they are. To learn more about Usability, take a look at Jakob Nielsen's site.

This site is also not particularly about development of software, though it will come up. After all, there is no point in being the greatest designer, if your designs are never realised in code.

Participation

I would encourage you to participate in the development of this site. E-mail me. Send in your ideas for the Monthly columns. Send in your comments - positive or negative. Send in your links to related sites. Tell us about books you've read. The best of the reader Feedback will be published each month. Full credit will always be given to contributions.

I need your help to make software products better. I want to start here. I hope you will join me in the effort.