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See also Jef Raskin's book "The Humane Interface". (And by "see also" I mean "stop what you're doing, get a copy, and read it now.")
by carapace 6y ago
See also Jef Raskin's book "The Humane Interface".
(And by "see also" I mean "stop what you're doing, get a copy, and read it now.")
- andrewflnr 6y agoYep. While there are only a few techniques I would use unchanged, the book's philosophy has been very formative. The focus on allowing users to form habits has particularly stuck with me as a principle with important non-obvious results (e.g. no adaptive menus).
- pavlov 6y agoIt’s also a principle that’s useful for resisting trend-based redesigns in SaaS products where users typically don’t have a choice of staying with the old design. Most web apps are the polar opposite of Raskin’s principles: highly modal screen-based UIs with low information density (because the designer loves airy padding and big fonts), constantly getting tinkered and unintentionally preventing habit formation.
- jfengel 6y agoI was one of the early in-house reviewers of the book, and it absolutely changed my life. One of the things that really struck me about it: the manuscript was written in double-spaced courier, with sketched out hand drawings. Coming from one of the designers of the Macintosh, the manuscript could have come from a Canon Cat. And that was the Right Thing. The formatting would be done by professionals. (I learned that after I put in an enormous amount of work formatting my own manuscript.) He did the thing that got the job done, putting the words in my hands and the hands of those who would make it look nice.