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
Winning by Design: The Methods of Gordon Murray
A case study of the working methods of one particularly successful designer in a highly competitive design domain - Formula One racing car design. Gordon Murray was chief designer for the very successful Brabham and McLaren racing car teams in the 1970s and 1980s. His record of success is characterised by innovative breakthroughs, often arising as sudden illuminations, based on considering the task from first principles and from a systemic viewpoint. His working methods are highly personal, and include intensive use of drawings. Personality factors and team management abilities also appear to be relevant. There are some evident similarities with some other successful, innovative designers
You need to make the step forward
Throughout a racing season there is constant, relentless pressure on the designer to keep making design improvements. But there is a limit to what can be achieved with any car design, before a jump has to be made to basically a new design, an innovation. As Gordon Murray says, âGiven the situation and the pressure at any one time, you do get to the brick wall...I mean you're doing all these normal modifications, you know you can't go any quicker, you need to make the step forward.â
In the midst of the pressure, the fervour, the panic, he âused to get breakthroughs, I mean I used to get like suddenly a mental block's lifted.â
Drawing the bits
That's what is great about race car design, because even though you've had the big idea - the âlight bulbâ thing, which is fun - the real fun is actually taking these individual things, that nobody's every done before, and in no time at all try and think of a way of designing them. And not only think of a way of doing them, but drawing the bits, having them made and testing them.
Like designing things for the first time
Gordon Murray insists on keeping experience 'at the back of your mind, not the front' and to work from first principles when designing. For instance, in designing a component such as a suspension wishbone, 'it's all too easy - and the longer you're in design the easier it is - to say, I know all about wishbones, this is how it's going to look because that's what wishbones look like.' But if you want to make a step forward, if you're looking for ways of making it much better and much lighter, than you have to go right back to load path analysis. It is like designing things for the first time, rather than the nth time.
Wonder Plots
Working from first principles, and working in a highly organized way seem to come naturally to him, but his personal design process is much less structured than the results might suggest. Although he can tightly organize his team and run a complex racing organisation, his personal ways of designing are relatively unstructured, based on annotated, thumb-nail sketches. âI don't sit down and say, OK, now I've had the idea, let's see, this is a solution, these are the different ways to go, if I do this, and do that; I do lots of scribbles just to save it, before I forget.â
Gordonâs design process is based on starting with a quick sketch of a whole idea, which is then developed through many different refinements. âI do a quick sketch of the whole idea, and then if there's one bit that looks good, instead of rubbing other bits out, I'd put that bit to one side; I'd do it again and expand on the good bit, and drop out the bad bit, and keep doing it, doing it; and end up with all these sketches, and eventually you end up throwing ninety percent of these away.â He also talks to himself - or rather, writes notes to himself on the sketches; notes such as ârubbishâ, âtoo heavyâ or âmove it this way 30mm.â Eventually he gets to the stage of more formal, orthographic drawings, but still drawing annotated plans, elevations and sections all together, âUntil at the end of the day the guys at Brabham used to call them âWonder Plotsâ, because they used to say âIt's a wonder anybody could see what was on themâ!â
I never have engineers that aren't designers
Although Gordon Murray carried immense personal responsibility for the design work of his racing cars, inevitably it involved a lot of teamwork. Clearly he has been successful in inspiring others to work with him. He likes to involve team members in the design problems, and for that reason prefers to recruit all-rounders to his team; âI never have engineers that aren't designers.â
The problem with CAD
He also likes to work collectively, standing around a drawing board discussing problems and trying ideas.
For this kind of teamwork, and especially for conceptual design work, he finds computer aided design systems too restrictive. For the McLaren F1 super-car, he installed a five-metre long drawing board in the design office, so that the car could be drawn full size. âThe problem with CAD for this sort of stuff is that you can never have a full-size drawing, unless you do a print, and by the time you do a print it's out of date in the concept stage.â He also does not like the one-person emphasis of CAD screens; âYou can only ever talk to one person at once - you stand behind and look over somebody's shoulder, which is not very good for a boss-designer relationship anyway, to have somebody standing behind you is never a good thing. To look over somebody's shoulder at a tiny little screen, it's just wrong, it's totally wrong.â
(On the other hand, he fully acknowledges that tasks like a complex suspension plot to determine the wheel envelope are ideal for CAD.)
Drawing as a means of thinking
Two-dimensional plans or sections can be seen with sketches and more diagrammatic marks all on the same piece of paper in what appears a confusing jumble.â These sound like Gordonâs âwonder plotsâ. The architects also use their drawings as a means of thinking âaloudâ, or âtalking to themselvesâ, as Gordon put it. For example, Lawson reports the architect Richard MacCormac as saying, âI use drawing as a process of criticism and discoveryâ; and the engineer-architect Santiago Calatrava as saying, âTo start with you see the thing in your mind and it doesnât exist on paper and then you start making simple sketches and organizing things and then you start doing layer after layer.... it is very much a dialogue.â
The common elements in these similar descriptions are the use of drawing not only as a means of externalising cognitive images but also of actively âthinking by drawingâ, and of responding, layer after layer and view after view, to the design as it emerges in the drawings. These observations also confirm Schönâs observation of designing as a âreflective conversationâ between the designer and the emerging design. It is the reliance on drawing, and the preference for the immediacy of the interaction and feedback that manual drawing gives, that makes the architects, like Gordon Murray, unenthusiastic about CAD as a conceptual design tool.
A new gestalt
The innovator has a systems mind, one that sees things in terms of how they relate to each other in producing a result, a new gestalt that to some degree changes the world.
Intense activity, then relaxation
The working style is based on periods of intense activity, coupled with other periods of more relaxed, reflective contemplation. This working style may not be a reflection of a particular personality trait, but a necessary aspect of creative work, which requires alternating intense effort with relaxation.
Strategic, not tactical
The working methods of the innovative designer are, for the most part, not systematic; there is little or no evidence of the use of systematic methods of creative thinking, for example. The innovative designer seems to be too involved with the urgent necessity of problem solving to want, or to need, to stand back and consider their working methods. Their design approach is strategic, not tactical.
Drawing for parallel design thinking
An important feature of their strategy is parallel working - keeping design activity going at many levels simultaneously. The best cognitive aid for supporting and maintaining parallel design thinking is drawing. Drawing with the conventional tools of paper and pencil gives the flexibility to shift levels of detail instantaneously; allows partial, different views at different levels of detail to be developed side by side, or above and below and overlapping; keeps records of previous views, ideas and notes that can be accessed relatively quickly and inserted into the current frame of reference; permits and encourages the simultaneous, non-hierarchical participation of co-workers, using a common representation.
The drawing of partial solutions or representations also aids the designerâs thinking processes, and provides some âtalk-backâ. As well as drawing, innovative designers frequently like to undertake practical work related to the design solution, such as building models or mock-ups, or participating in construction.
A small team of committed coworkers
The innovative designer also likes, perhaps needs, to work with a small team of committed co-workers who share the same passions and dedication.
- ââOn Talentââ