User Interface Design recommendations

#1

Hi everyone

Does anyone have any recommendations for books on user interface design, I’d like to learn some of the principles practices and philosophies involved in designing a good intuitive interface, any suggestions?

Thanks,

Joe

#2

The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin is fantastic. He was a lead designer at Apple for a while. It’s definitely more theoretical, covering issues in cognitive science, rather than “do this for a splash screen”.

#3

Assuming you are refering to interface design for character setup in 3D computer animation, there are a couple of resources that I really liked…

  • This forum for one - tons of people ask questions and give awesome advice. Really, its truely amazing.
  • If you want a book - ‘Stop Staring’ by Jason Osipa has a pretty cool section about facial expresson setup.
  • The guys over at www.rigging101.com have some great tutorials about setting up controllers for your rig - they also have some rigs you can play with and investigate, complete with controllers and facial expression interface.

The later two are Maya based, but the priciples should translate over to other software.
That should get you started. Hope this helps.

#4

Interesting, don’t think I’ve ever heard the term ‘interface design’ associated with character set up and rigging… But no, I was referring to graphic design, graphical user interfaces, human factors, etc.

Books that cover principles and practices of designing intuitive and easy to understand interfaces for software packages, etc.

Thanks for the suggestion MrTristan, I’ll check it out… Anyone else have any suggestions?

  • Joe
#5

I no longer do design consultant work for Human Factor development, User Centered Design or GUI design for software development, web management applications, corporate online learning, multimedia, etc., but when I did… I found the following links and listed resources rather helpful:

Lists most of the books and websites I referenced in the past:
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/ucd%20_web_devel.html

http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/2003/ucd

http://www.isii.com/ui_design.html

http://usableweb.com/

I’m sure there are more but that should get you started. :slight_smile:

t

#6

Alan Cooper’s “About Face” and “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum” are excellent books on the subject.

#7

These are all good resources but please don’t confuse graphic design (making something look cool) with good UI design. Good design is far more about task and user analysis that pretty pictures.

#8

That’s a fair point, but good user interface design does involve graphic design… It doesn’t necessarily need it, but it can be better if it uses it well.

  • Joe
#9

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