Posts Tagged ‘Usability’

designing good user interfaces (2 – Removing Useless Clutter)

Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Useless clutter

Useless clutter

Less clutter

Less clutter

The groupbox in the first UI is completely useless and it only adds more clutter for free, so it has been removed in the second UI. What we get is a less cluttered UI and every widget is grouped by the tabwidget.

designing good user interfaces (1 – Label Alignment)

Saturday, October 31st, 2009
Bad Label Alignment

Bad Label Alignment

Good Label Alignment

Good Label Alignment

The first UI has a wrong label alignment (KDE 3.x alignment), while the second UI has the right label alignment (KDE 4.x alignment).
HIG on techbase

Label placement in forms

designing good user interfaces (0)

Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Example of a bad ui layout.

Example of a bad ui layout.

Example of a good ui layout.

Example of a good ui layout.

The first UI (the bad one) has a complex grid layout which is cluttered and confused, while the second UI has a better layout which looks like a book page that can be read easily from left to right and from top to bottom.
The second UI uses more vertical space, but we must not forget that one of our primary goals  is to provide usable UIs.