UIs

#1

Hi,

I am about to emark on a re-write of a graphics application that I have been writing for the past few years, which I intend to be a commercial product, rather than an application that’s only suitable for me to use! One of the issues I’m trying to resolve is the type and style of user interface to adopt. The program itself is targetted at people who might be used to using things like Poser, Daz Studio, Vue and Bryce, all of which have fairly non standard Windows user interfaces. The quesiton is, do I try to create something a little less Windows like which these users might be more happy with, but risk creating a learning curve if I get it wrong?

My initial reaction is to keep it as standard and as simple as possible, but I wondered what others think. Note, if done well, it is possible more mainstream or even high end graphics users may find it useful from time to time and would probably be put off by any custom UI.

Regards,

Max

#2

i think you’re always right to use the standard gui-stuff on windows. in which language are you programming?
since i was learning java and java-swing over the past years, i really like the simple swing-gui even though you can change them also a little bit. But as you know they are not the fastest guis available. :shrug:

But it’s also fun to do the gui on vc++ - it’s so easy!
And after all, i would choose the windows-layout, since all professional programs mostly look like this.

#3

I second the recommendation.

If you want a little flair in the UI, make (or better yet get an artist to make) custom icons and a custom color scheme. It’s amazing how much a UI theme affects users’ interpretations of your software.

#4

Thanks for re-enforcing my own thoughts. I think colour and the use of colour/icons in the user interface are vital, but agree that inventing new metaphors when it comes to controls often causes more problems than it solves. IMHO this should only be done when the problem you are trying to tackle is quite specialised.

#5

The other thing I’d say is that if your program is going to have similar functionality to, say, poser, and you expect to a fair amount of your users to also be users of poser, just copy UI paradigms that seem useful. They say that the only intuitive UI is the nipple - after that, it’s all learned. So, if your users have already learned good ways of doing things, providing those methods will be appeciated.

If you’re looking at doing a cross-platform app, Qt is quite good, although quite pricey. wxWindows (recently renamed to wxWidgets I believe) is not as object oriented, but is completely free on all operating systems.

If you’re going to stick to a single system, and don’t want the hassle of learning one of the other toolkits, you could just stick with the hassle of using the MFC… :slight_smile:

#6

The former app was written in VC++ 6. The new one will be my first outing in .NET using C#. Should be interesting …

#7

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