interfaces
An open platform is essential
Web trails
gridless.design
AÂ Website by Donnie D'Amatoget rid of the grid
Blasphemy, I need structure and order!"
The web is good at these things, just not in the ways that designers have been accustomed to working. We'll take a look at how we got here and how we might change our perspective. Let's think outside of the grid and allow other guidelines to provide a comprehensive layout.
Web Design is 95% Typography
An Article by Oliver Reichenstein95% of the information on the web is written language. It is only logical to say that a web designer should get good training in the main discipline of shaping written information, in other words: Typography.
Why Do All Websites Look the Same?
An Article by Boris MĂŒllerOn the visual weariness of the web.
Cloudbusting
An Article by Daisy AliotoIt is fun to revisit memories this way, a digital stamp in my weather passport, where everything can be contained in a forecast and Stockholm sits between Vilnius and London by sheer chance. It has also been a way to feel close to people I love while traveling, to know whether it is raining where they are.
As with most technology, this is artistry by committee. There is no Thomas Cole waiting in the wings. But someone has to animate the stars, to decide when to streak one across the screenâto play god in our pockets.
Always Already Programming
An Article by Melanie HoffEveryone who interacts with computers has in important ways always already been programming them.
Every time you make a folder or rename a file on your computer, the actions you take through moving your mouse and clicking on buttons, translate into text-based commands or scripts which eventually translate into binary.
Why are the common conceptions of what a programmer and user is so divorced from each other? The distinction between programmer and user is reinforced and maintained by a tech industry that benefits from a population rendered computationally passive. If we accept and adopt the role of less agency, we then make it harder for ourselves to come into more agency.
The Finish Fetish Artists
An EssayFor others, perhaps especially those artists who worked with light and transparency and were involved in the birth of the Light and Space Movement, an immaculate surface is a prerequisite. Helen Pashgian explained this very clearly:
âOn any of these works, if there is a scratch... thatâs all you see. The point of it is not the finish at all â the point is being able to interact with the piece, whether it is inside or outside, to see into it, to see through it, to relate to it in those ways. But thatâs why we need to deal with the finish, so we can deal with the piece on a much deeper levelâ.
The importance of a pristine surface calls for a very low tolerance to damage by the artists. The feeling is shared by Larry Bell:
âI donât want you to see stains on the glass. I donât want you to see fingerprints on the glass... I donât want you to see anything except the light thatâs reflected, absorbed, or transmittedâ
Spatial Software
An Article by John PalmerSpatial Interfaces
An Essay by John PalmerSoftware applications can utilize spatial interfaces to afford users powerful ways of thinking and interacting. Though often associated with gaming, spatial interfaces can be useful in any kind of software, even in less obvious domains like productivity tools or work applications. We will see spatial interfaces move into all verticals, starting with game-like interfaces for all kinds of social use-cases.
- ââThere is no app that replicates a deck of cardsââ
- ââHumans are spatial creaturesââ
- ââWeb trailsââ
- ââMakespace.funââ
- ââNototoââ
- ââSpatial Softwareââ
- ââSpatial Web Browsingââ
Spatial Web Browsing
An Article by Maggie AppletonThere are some new apps appearing that offer alternative ways of browsing the web...This canvas-based approach adds spatial dimension to the web browsing experience; they allow us to arrange browser windows above, below, to the left, and right of other browser windows.
The same way we're able to put an open book next to a piece of paper and below a row of sticky notes in meatspace. Arranging objects in space to create groupings, indicate relationships, and build hierarchies is one of those classical human skills that never goes out of style.
- ââSpatial Interfacesââ
- ââSpatial Softwareââ
How I Build
An Article by Pirijan KetheswaranIn 2014, I wrote about my belief that design and engineering are best when tightly woven together. Thatâs truer now than ever.
If Iâm feeling confident, Iâll jump right into my text editorâŠFrom here, more functionality is added and the code is tweaked until the feature looks and feels right to me. Whether itâs something simple like this, or prototyping a new interaction like multi-connect, thereâs no substitute for designing with real code.
In rare cases when I have ideas or plans that Iâm less confident about, itâs time to break out the paper, pens, and markers,
Because the Kinopio interface elements and aesthetic are full-grown, I almost never use traditional design software anymore.
In search of visual texture
An Article by Rachel PruddenIâm now more inclined to attribute Looseleafâs power to its visual texture than to some cognitive media-style abstraction. And the visual texture owes more to the beauty (yes, beauty!) of the original pdfs from the Vasulka Archive. Perhaps the demo is best understood not as a prototype generic tool, but as a specific curated experience in its own right, with form and content claiming equal importance in its overall success.
Even so, I think there are some general lessons that can be drawn from this demo:
- Content is not inert
- Visual texture lets content breathe
- Visual texture lets the eye wander without losing itself
- ââLooseleafââ
Menus, Metaphors and Materials: Milestones of User Interface Design
An Article by Boris MĂŒllerStudents traditionally learn art and design by studying the masters, analyzing, sketching and interpreting the grand visions of the past. In doing this, they get to understand the ideas, concepts and motivations behind the visual form.
In user interface design, this practice is curiously absent.
- ââInterface design is ephemeralââ
- ââXerox Starââ
- ââMagic Capââ
- ââInformation Landscapesââ
- ââBeOS Iconsââ
press.stripe.com
AÂ WebsiteStripe partners with millions of the worldâs most innovative businesses. These businesses are the result of many different inputs. Perhaps the most important ingredient is âideas.â
Stripe Press highlights ideas that we think can be broadly useful. Some books contain entirely new material, some are collections of existing work reimagined, and others are republications of previous works that have remained relevant over time or have renewed relevance today.
Embracing Asymmetrical Design
An Article by Ben NadelHumans love symmetry. We find symmetry to be very attractive. Our brains may even be hard-wired through evolution to process symmetrical data more efficiently. So, it's no surprise that, as designers, we try to build symmetry into our product interfaces and layouts. It makes them feel very pleasant to look at.
Unfortunately, data is not symmetricalâŠOnce you release a product into "the real world", and users start to enter "real world data" into it, you immediately see that asymmetrical data, shoe-horned into a symmetrical design, can start to look terrible.
To fix this, we need to lean into an asymmetric reality. We need to embrace the fact that data is asymmetric and we need to design user interfaces that can expand and contract to work with the asymmetry, not against it. To borrow from Bruce Lee, we need to build user interfaces that act more like water:
âYou must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.â â Bruce Lee
Changing Our Development Mindset
AÂ Fragment by Michelle BarkerWe simply can no longer design and develop only for âoptimalâ content or browsing conditions. Instead, we must embrace the inherent flexibility and unpredictability of the web, and build resilient components. Static mockups cannot cater to every scenario, so many design decisions fall to developers at build time. Like it or not, if youâre a UI developer, you are a designer â even if you donât consider yourself one!
...Sometimes interpreting a design means asking the designer to further elaborate on their ideas (or even re-evaluate them). Other times, it means making design decisions on the fly or making recommendations based on our knowledge and experience.
AJDVIV
AÂ WebsiteThe Fidelity Curve
An Article by Ryan SingerHow do we choose which level of fidelity is appropriate for a project?
I think about it like this: The purpose of making sketches and mockups before coding is to gain confidence in what we plan to do. Iâm trying to remove risk from the decision to build something by somehow âpreviewingâ it in a cheaper form. Thereâs a trade-off here. The higher the fidelity of the mockup, the more confidence it gives me. But the longer it takes to create that mockup, the more time Iâve wasted on an intermediate step before building the real thing.
I like to look at that trade-off economically. Each method reduces risk by letting me preview the outcome at lower fidelity, at the cost of time spent on it. The cost/benefit of each type of mockup is going to vary depending on the fidelity of the simulation and the work involved in building the real thing.
What UI really is (and how UX confuses matters)
An Article by Ryan SingerPeople mix the terms UI and UX together. UX is tricky because it doesnât refer to any one thing. Interface design, visual styling, code performance, uptime, and feature set all contribute to the userâs âexperience.â Books on UX further complicate matters by including research methods and development methodologies. All of this makes the field confusing for people who want to understand the fundamentals.
Thatâs why I avoid teaching the term âUX.â It means too many things to too many different people. Instead I focus on individual skills. Once you understand the individual skills, you can assemble them into a composite system without blurring them together. For software design, the core skill among all user-facing concerns is user interface design.
User Inyerface
AÂ WebsiteA worst-practice UI experiment.
Beyond Artboards
An Essay by Chuånqà SunThe Pursuit of Lossless Design-Development Handoffs.
Intelligent arrows
AÂ Fragment by Chris CoyierReminds me of a little feature I like in Notion where if you type dash-arrow (like ->) it turns into â â but intelligently â like it doesnât do that with inline code or a code block.
- ââUnicode Arrowsââ
Safari 15 isn't bad, just misunderstood
An Article by Jeff KirvinWhat I see in Safari 15 is the first steps into a new design language for iOS, one prioritizing adaptive, contextual interfaces. Ever since the move to the new âall screenâ iPhone X design, content has been king on iOS, and Apple has been removing more and more user chrome. This is the next step on that journey.
The Nine States of Design
An Article by Vince Speelman- Nothing
- Loading
- None
- One
- Some
- Too Many
- Incorrect
- Correct
- Done
State of the Windows
An ArticleHow many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
Weâve all heard this riddle: if you dig down deep enough in Windows 10, youâll find elements that date from Windows 3.x days. But is it actually true? In this article weâll discover just how many UI layers are in Windows and when they were first introduced.
narrowdesign.com
AÂ Website by Nick JonesDesign
Prototype
CodeGuidebook: Graphical User Interface Gallery
AÂ WebsiteGuidebook is a website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces, as well as various materials related to them.
It's all just geek talk
AÂ Fragment by Riccardo MoriIâm finding that many people not only have lowered their standards with regard to the user interface, but more and more often when I bring up the subject, they seem to consider it a somewhat secondary aspect, something thatâs only good for âgeek talkâ. The same kind of amused reaction laymen have to wine or coffee connoisseurs when they describe flavours and characteristics using specific lingo. Something that makes sense only to wine or coffee geeks but has little to no meaning or impact for the regular person.
The problem is that if an increasing number of people start viewing user interface design as an afterthought, or something that isnât fundamental to the design of a product or experience â itâs all just âgeek talkâ â then there is a reduced incentive to care about it on the part of the maker of the product.
Pictures of Websites
An Article by Matthew StrömWhen I was a product designer, people would ask what I did for a living, and sometimes Iâd answer âI draw pictures of websites.â
Sure, I could just say âI design websites.â Thatâs true. The end result of my work is (hopefully) that a website looks better, works better, or results in better outcomes.
But most of my day isnât spent looking at the website, or working on the code of the website, or manipulating the website directly in some way. Itâs spent in Figma or Sketch, drawing pictures of how I think the website should look and work.
Through some kind of alchemy, the pictures I draw have an impact on the finished website. But theyâre not all the same.
The User Interface of URLs
AÂ Research PaperURLs (Uniform Resource Locators) have rapidly become the standard method for specifying how to access information on the Internet. Although mostly used on the World Wide Web, URLs are also becoming more common for specifying locations for other distributed Internet services such as Gopher and anonymous FTP. Internet users see URLs both online and in print, and therefore URLs have visual interfaces. This paper gives an overview of many of the issues that concern the visual and user interfaces of URLs.
Web History Chapter 6: Web Design
AÂ Chapter by Jay HoffmannAfter the first websites demonstrate the commercial and aesthetic potential of the web, the media industry floods the web with a surge of new content. Amateur webzines â which define and voice and tone unique to the web â are soon joined by traditional publishers. By the mid to late 90âs, most major companies will have a website, and the popularity of the web will begin to explore. Search engines emerge as one solution to cataloging the expanding universe of websites, but even they struggle to keep up. Brands soon begin to look for a way to stand out.
Unobtrusive feedback
An Article by Jeremy KeithThe text 'added' and 'removed' drifts upwards from the toggle button and fades away.
So we all know Super Mario, right? And if you think about when youâre collecting coins in Super Mario, it doesnât stop the game and pop up an alert dialogue and say, âYou have just collected ten points, OK, Cancelâ, right? It just does it. It does it in the background, but it does provide you with a feedback mechanism.
The feedback you get in Super Mario is about the number of points youâve just gained. When you collect an item that gives you more points, the number of points youâve gained appears where the item was âŠand then drifts upwards as it disappears. Itâs unobtrusive enough that it wonât distract you from the gameplay youâre concentrating on but it gives you the reassurance that, yes, you have just gained points.
The Mother of All Demos
AÂ Lecture by Douglas EngelbartA name retroactively applied to a landmark computer demonstration, presented by Douglas Engelbart on December 9, 1968. The 90-minute presentation essentially demonstrated almost all the fundamental elements of modern personal computing:
- windows,
- hypertext,
- graphics,
- efficient navigation and command input,
- video conferencing,
- the computer mouse,
- word processing,
- dynamic file linking,
- revision control,
- and a collaborative real-time editor
The UX of Lego Interface Panels
An Article by George CaveTwo studs wide and angled at 45°, the ubiquitous â2x2 decorated slopeâ is a LEGO minifigureâs interface to the world. These iconic, low-resolution designs are the perfect tool to learn the basics of physical interface design.
Like, just a post complaining that screens should be better
An Article by Matt WebbItâs been 19 years since Pixar released Monsters, Inc. with all that CGI hair. Where are my hairy icons? Ones that get all long and knotted as the notifications number goes up.
Why canât I feel my phone? I found that paper from 2010 (when I was complaining about keyboards) about using precision electrostatics to make artificial textures on touchscreens.
I should be able to run my thumb over my phone while itâs in my pocket and feel bumps for apps that want my attention. Touching an active element should feel rough. A scrollbar should *slip. Imagine the accessibility gains. But honestly I donât even care if itâs useful: 1.5 billion smartphone screens are manufactured every year. For that number, I expect bells. I expect whistles.
- ââA Brief Rantââ
Understanding Understanding
A dot went for a walk
A dot went for a walk and turned into a line.
The dot, the line, the dance, the story, and the painting had found connections. Memory became learning, learning became understanding.Learning is remembering what one is interested in. Learning, interest, and memory are the tango of understanding.
Creating a map of meaning between data and understanding is the transformation of big data into big understanding.
The dot had embraced understanding.
Understanding precedes action.
Each of us is a dot on a journey.Admitting ignorance
The most essential prerequisite to understanding is to be able to admit when you don't know something. Striving to be the dumbest person in the room.
When you donât have to filter your inquisitiveness through a smoke screen of intellectual posturing, you can genuinely receive or listen to new information. If you are always trying to disguise your ignorance of a subject, you will be distracted from understanding it.
Information imposters
Information imposters: This is nonsense that masquerades as information because it is postured in the form of information. We automatically give a certain weight to data based on the form in which it is delivered to us. Because we donât take the time to question this, we assume that we have received some information.
My favorite example of this is in cookbook recipes that call for you to âcook until done.â This doesnât tell you very much. Why bother? Information imposters are fodder for administravitis.
Michaelangelo's hammer
A young man named Michelangelo stands in front of a huge granite monolith. He stands there at a time in history before the technologies that brought us the hammer and chisel have occurred. He gazes at the rock. He dreams his dream and the best that he is able to say is, What a wonderful stone you are.
âŠ
Michaelangelo now stands in front of the same rock. Thrust into his hands are a hammer in one and a chisel in the other. He looks at his hands, at the technological tools that they hold, and gazing at the same stone, with epiphanic zeal, says I must let Moses out.
I won't get
If I don't ask, I won't get.
Talking with Clinton
When you are talking with Clinton, he is not looking over your shoulder to see who else is in the room. You can tell he is not thinking about how he is going to respond to you. He is there, present and listening.
By the way, when you scramble the letters in the word listen, it becomes a new word: silent. Weâre so often wrapped up in our own self-talk, we forget to listen and learn the information in the first placeâŠand you canât remember or understand something you never observed.
Scales of change
To understand revolutionary change in its full complexity â not just what happened, but why it happened â we need a model that works across multiple scales, and the disciplines that traverse them.
The method
Well no, see, thatâs the tricky part. I always try to come up with things that when they find out the method, the method is as interesting as the effect itself. â David Blaine
Selling your own ignorance
When you sell your expertise - and what I mean by sell is to move ahead in a corporation, or sell an idea to a publisher, or sell an ability to a client - by definition, youâre selling from a limited repertoire.
However, when you sell your ignorance to move ahead, when you sell your desire to create and explore and navigate paths to knowledge, when you sell your curiosity - you sell from a bucket with an infinitely deep bottom that represents an unlimited repertoire. And, you sell in a way thatâs not intimidating, in a way that joins the explanation to the fascination that comes with understanding.
You only understand something relative to something you already understand
A good question is better than a brilliant answer
The eyes of a traveler
Weâve all heard that travel broadens the mind. But beneath this clichĂ© lies a deep truth. Things stand out because theyâre different, so we notice every detail, from street signs to mailboxes to two you pay at a restaurant. We learn a lot when we travel, not because we are any smarter on the road but because we pay such close attention. On a trip, we become our own version of Sherlock Holmes, intensely observing the environment around us. We are continuously trying to figure out a world that is foreign and new.
Too often, we go through our day-to-day life on cruise control, oblivious to huge swaths of our surroundings. To notice friction points â and therefore opportunities to do things better â it helps to see the world with fresh eyes. When you meet creative people with lots of ideas constantly bubbling to the surface, you often come away feeling that they are operating on a different frequency. And they are, most of the time. They have all their receptors on â and frequently turned up to eleven. But the fact is, we are all capable of this mode. Try to engage a beginnerâs mind. For kids, everything is novel, so they ask lots of questions, and look at the world wide-eyed, soaking it all in. Everywhere they turn, they tend to think, Isnât that interesting? rather than, I already know that.
By adopting the eyes of a traveler and a beginnerâs mindset, you will notice a lot of details that you might normally have overlook. You put aside assumptions and are fully immersed in the world around you. In this receptive mode, youâre ready to start actively searching out inspiration.
Cart before the horse
It seemed to him that in pursuit of an all-purpose, all-serving health care plan, the country was designing an ocean liner before it even understood why boats float.
The What and the How
How many aspects of problem solving and design solutions are there? Many, many might answer.
But there are actually just two: What to do and how to do it.
Before anything else, before you consider how youâre going to get it done or how much youâll have to pay for it or how youâll get permission to do it â before anything else, you have to decide what you want. You have to decide what kind of place you want to live in, what kind of community, what kind of city.
We donât pay enough attention to the old adage: Be careful what you wish for, because you just may get it.
Thinking with the hand
The idea of thinking with your hands is not the exclusive domain of sculptors or engineers. In healthcare, for exams, surgeons have a powerful link between the head and the hands. Of course, like all healthcare professionals, their work involves a lot of deep knowledge and understanding. But itâs not all in their brain. If you were in medical school, learning to be a surgeon, for example, would you want your professor to be someone who writes about surgery or would you rather be taught by a surgeon? Many surgeons donât publish scholarly articles. They spent time perfecting their skill with their hands. In some ways, the relationship between surgery and the larger field of medicine is analogous to the relationship between design and the larger field of engineering. Designers â and design thinkers âoften think with their hands.
A pattern of understandings
The clock has no finished design and it has been made without any careful drawings or mathematical calculations. The pieces are only made if I can hold their details in my head as I make them, without reference to any set of external measures. I do make rough sketches of some parts as a path to understanding them, but never use these during the making of the parts. The clock gradually grows through trial and error and lots of physical work with metal, but out of this has come a set of principles of making that were not clear to me before doing the clock. I have finally realized that what I am actually making is a pattern of understandings of the process of making rather than the things that are actually being made. â Richard Benson
#15
How different am I, making clock number 15, from the process of natural selection laboring under changing conditions to generate the biological constructs? That ancient evolutionary system works on the basis of trial and error repeated in huge numbers over immense spans of time, with the failures discarded and the successes retained. At times it seems to me that my clock making is quite similar, as my mind, just barely thinking, sorts through huge numbers of possibilities and discards them as failures before even trying them, so the few that are made have a pretty good chance of success. Is this foresight some form of understanding? I think not. No revelation here, just enough thinking to spur the maker on to cut some piece of metal which, once made, might fail or succeed. Yet â in either case â the thing made and its creation remains the sole root of any real understanding that takes place. The clock is crude but gets built, and even in its base simplicity teaches its maker how to understand what must be understood for something to be made. â Richard Benson
A classroom without walls
The city is education â and the architecture of education rarely has much to do with the building of schools. The city is a schoolhouse, and its ground floor is both bulletin board and library. The graffiti of the city are its window displays announcing themselves, telling about what theyâre doing and why and where theyâre doing it. Everything we do â if described, made clear, and made observable â is education: the Show and Tell, the city itself. It is a classroom without walls, an open university for people of all ages offering a boundless curriculum with unlimited expertise. If we can make our urban environment comprehensible and observable, we will have created classrooms with endless windows on the world.