Comments on: designing good user interfaces (0)

By: elumamid

elumamid — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:18:48 +0000

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By: Uninstall

Uninstall — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:26:36 +0000

Honestly I’ve nothing to say except that saving space and filling every empty pixel with a widget doesn’t increase the usability.
Anyway, please, don’t forget that a good logic with a bad layout can’t be really usable…

By: kap4lin

kap4lin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:21:15 +0000

@Uninstall:
As most comments note, good / bad, depends on the context and logic of the application. The second UI is just another option – it need not be a “good enhancement” at all!

To me the compact nature of the first UI is more appealing than the sprawling length of the second.

By: mica

mica — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:25:59 +0000

I dont get it.We have widescreens and are building apps that dont fill it.
Why is the example 2 a good design if it doesnt use the full screen?

By: dherman

dherman — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:43:40 +0000

I agree, your good ui is much more pleasant

As others stated it is also important that window sizes accommodate (un)-usual screen sizes (window just needs to be aware of the screen size and add a scrollbar when necessary. You would expect the window manager to do that job). The folding Ideas mentioned are also good suggestions.

To me the thing that is the biggest usability issue currently (and is not visible in either of the UI’s shown) is the trend to transparency. In both of your examples the background does not interfere with the text that I am trying to use. Your good UI is more pleasing, but if one UI was opaque and the other transparent, my decision would have to be the opaque, no matter how badly it was organized. OK Within limits

By: litb

litb — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:56:51 +0000

This is completely undecidable if you don’t know what the options mean. Anyway, having seen only the pics, i thought the first is the good one., It looks cleaner, and doesn’t look like someone just put random widgets one after another.

In any case, the meaning of the widgets is important. Having search options far away from the search box is bad, for example.

By: DanaKil

DanaKil — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:19:41 +0000

it could be great if complex dialog box area could be collapsed when they don’t fit on screen. Each area should have an explicit label and expand on click or on hover. Of course it’s not perfect for discoverability but IMO it’s still better than scrollbars (it’s a pain to scroll on a netbook).

Of course, this behavior should be activated only when the screen resolution is too small and good descriptive area on each collapsed block should be provided.

By: Cyrille Berger

Cyrille Berger — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:32:18 +0000

Is there anyone with GUI designing training or knowledge around ? With proper training ? Are those dialogs examples taken from any HIG ? Or are they going to be in KDE4 HIG ?

By: Sergey

Sergey — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:57:42 +0000

I would tell #2 is BAD UI.
Frankly we cant say what interface bad or good without knowledge of logical model.

in #2 may happen that users should type text first and only after to check box in the bottom.

so all of it just speculation.

Concerning concept.. why not you have label fields on pane? It would be nice if user can see comment of process.
thx

By: Uninstall

Uninstall — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:13:55 +0000

The second UI is just an example which is not meant to be the solution to all our problems but it’s a good enchancement. Moving groups to different tabs might be a good solution in some situations…
Anyway we don’t plan to make KDE unusable on netbooks but we are working to provide a good shell (plasma-netbook) also on netbooks.