Cookbook: Usability

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cookbookWhat icons are for

Yegor Gilyov, 6 November 2008 Comments (0)

FundamentalsIcon designMaster-classUsability

You would not believe it but in 1985 Apple asserted an idea in its developers' guide to replace text messages with icons wherever possible. As though icons would be more clear to a novice user than words. Of course this is bollocks. It is much easier to express any idea in words.

cookbookDesigning an iconic language

Yegor Gilyov, 21 June 2007 Comments (4)

FundamentalsIcon designMaster-classUsability

Last fall I made a brief report at a conference organized by RusCHI and 1C in the context of celebrating the World Usability Day. I was talking about designing a user interface icon language. Following the “better later than never” principle, I hereby bring the same report to your attention in the form of text with illustrations.

cookbookShowing your cards, or why Windows is not MacOS

Yegor Gilyov, 1 June 2007 Comments (0)

Usability

For many Mac OS X users Expose is the most favorite interface feature. And deservedly so, since it is very efficient and convenient for toggling between windows.

Illustration by Eugene Artsebasov

No wonder that Expose is often presented as a key advantage of Mac OS interface over Windows. “Ha-ha, looks as though Redmond tried to copy Expose but tripped over the limited capacity of its graphical engine,” some may quip. “They must be afraid of being accused of direct plagiarism,” others say. Is that so? Let’s try to investigate.

cookbookWho pecked all the crumbs, or why MacOS is not Windows

Yegor Gilyov, 24 April 2007 Comments (11)

Usability

Finder serves as a file manager in MacOS X. Its main problem is that it does not give the user the sense of location.

cookbookVisual style: uniform or custom-tailored?

Yegor Gilyov, 19 May 2006 Comments (0)

UsabilityVisual style

There is an opinion that non-standard theming is a property of an entertaining, non-serious application suited, in any case, for home, non-professional use. Moreover, this opinion is carved in the holy testimonies of Windows UX Guide:

As a general rule, application theming is appropriate for programs where the overall experience is more important than productivity. Highly themed applications should be immersive, yet only used for short periods of time. This rule makes theming suitable for games and kiosk applications, but unsuitable for productivity applications.

Non-standard visual style equals enemy of productivity. This is gives as an axiom. Is it really so?

cookbookWhat could outrank Basecamp?

Yegor Gilyov, 12 April 2006 Comments (1)

BasecampCriticismToolsUsability

There is hardly ever a person who could be surprised by a convenient and nice extranet system. “Oh! You are using Basecamp! Great!” — that is what our clients tell us after they have received an invitation to visit turbomilk.seework.com. Basecamp has become a de facto standard, and 37signals, its developers, showed up as recognized gurus of web applications design and usability.

Basecamp screenshot When we started using Basecamp, it felt like we are in heaven. The system simply did its job without making us think that we are too dumb to use it. A complete absence of tweaking options (except coloring the interface) turned out to be a great advantage of no necessity to spend the time and efforts to do that tweaking. Just launch — and work. However, after a year of active use of Basecamp (several dozens of accomplished projects later) I started to think we need to take a more sober look at this system.