Chapter 1: Creating Usable Interfaces

Overview

Sometimes it seems that no one can agree what user interface design really is. Is it the painstaking process an artist goes through to create shaded icons that light up when the mouse approaches? Is it the hours spent in a usability lab subjecting users to a complicated new application? Is it the series of decisions that determine how to model information using common controls and metaphors?

In fact, user interface design is really a collection of several different tasks:

User interface modeling. This is the process where you look at the tasks a program needs to accomplish, and decide how to break these tasks into windows and controls. To emerge with an elegant design, you need to combine instinct, convention, a dash of psychology, and painstaking usability testing.

User interface architecture. This is the logical design you use to divide the functionality in your application into separate objects. Creating a consistent, well-planned design makes it easy to extend, alter, and reuse portions of the user interface framework.

User interface coding. This is the process where you write the code for managing the user interface with the appropriate classes and objects. Ideally, you follow the first two steps to lay out a specific user interface model and architecture before you begin this stage.

This book concentrates on the third, and most time-consuming step, where user interfaces designs are translated into code using the tools and techniques of .NET. However, it's impossible to separate good coding from good code design, and discussion about user interface architecture, the second item on the list, recurs throughout this book (and is the focus of the next chapter).

This chapter, however, focuses on the first task: user interface design. Here you'll examine the essential guidelines that no programmer can afford to ignore. You learn basic tips for organizing information, handling complexity, and entering into the mind of that often-feared final judge: the end user.

You could skip ahead at this point and dive right into .NET code. However, the greatest programming framework in the world won't solve some common, critical user interface mistakes. Learning how to design an interface is no less important than learning how to work with it in code.