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I've been designing a complex desktop application.. there's not that much info out there. I found these helpful: Designing the Win95: https://socket3.wordpress

I've been designing a complex desktop application.. there's not that much info out there. I found these helpful: Designing the Win95: https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-95s-user-interface/ https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9... Also the final design guides: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/Microsoft_WindowsGuidelines.pdf https://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/M... A (really old) book: https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/1118766571/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=about+face&qid=1616050002&sr=8-2 https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Des... Another book: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interfaces-Patterns-Effective-Interaction/dp/1492051969/ref=pd_sbs_4?pd_rd_w=HQRML&pf_rd_p=527ea27c-adf6-4b67-9c5f-265eb29e0622&pf_rd_r=A8VA18BM21JAZ1KQJJMZ&pd_rd_r=2525d4f9-fe7a-479a-b945-a0d5054a93b3&pd_rd_wg=npsDd&pd_rd_i=1492051969&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interfaces-Patterns-Effecti... Oddly enough these are all ancient. There hasn't been much innovation in that space though. (apart from High Dpi and Dark Mode) Blender recently did a redesign of their UI, they have lot's of discussions about their rationale.

PostThisTooFast 6y ago
"Dark mode" is not an innovation. It's a half-assed reversal of a regression. Computers used to show light characters on a dark background. 8-bit platforms often defaulted to white text on a dark-blue background, which until just a few years ago was still available in Word as a checkbox option. Then the "desktop publishing" craze came along, and brought the analogy of a computer screen to a piece of paper. But this inverse (black text on a white background) scheme ignored the fact that paper doesn't EMIT light. Using these systems was akin to reading the label on the surface of a lit light bulb all day. But for two decades, Windows let you set up a system-wide color scheme whose colors would be inherited by (nearly) all applications. It was great; you could (and I did, in the early '90s) replace the dumb inverse default color scheme with a "charcoal" scheme... essentially exactly what most "dark modes" are today. I think Unix GUIs allowed you to set up color schemes too, leaving only the vaunted Mac GUI as the hard-coded,glaring eyeball-strainer of the era. But now that people are finally realizing that inverse color schemes suck, what did Microsoft do? REMOVE the color-scheme editor from Windows. So now we're being dribbled out "dark mode" one OS, Web page, and application at a time. And it's still hard-coded. That's not innovation. It's pathetic.
- noisem4ker 6y ago
  I fully agree that customization regressed, and it's a pity. However... >paper doesn't EMIT light Your retina doesn't care if the photons it receives are emitted (as with CRTs) or reflected (as with paper). If you feel like you're staring into a lightbulb, your monitor's brightness is set too high. Set it properly, and, in a well lit environment, your monitor's white should match that of the wall behind it, or that of a piece of paper on your desk.
RyanHamilton 6y ago
Thanks for sharing those links. The win95 design was a great read, a proper data driven approach to user experience.

PostThisTooFast 6y ago

"Dark mode" is not an innovation. It's a half-assed reversal of a regression. Computers used to show light characters on a dark background. 8-bit platforms often defaulted to white text on a dark-blue background, which until just a few years ago was still available in Word as a checkbox option. Then the "desktop publishing" craze came along, and brought the analogy of a computer screen to a piece of paper. But this inverse (black text on a white background) scheme ignored the fact that paper doesn't EMIT light. Using these systems was akin to reading the label on the surface of a lit light bulb all day. But for two decades, Windows let you set up a system-wide color scheme whose colors would be inherited by (nearly) all applications. It was great; you could (and I did, in the early '90s) replace the dumb inverse default color scheme with a "charcoal" scheme... essentially exactly what most "dark modes" are today. I think Unix GUIs allowed you to set up color schemes too, leaving only the vaunted Mac GUI as the hard-coded,glaring eyeball-strainer of the era. But now that people are finally realizing that inverse color schemes suck, what did Microsoft do? REMOVE the color-scheme editor from Windows. So now we're being dribbled out "dark mode" one OS, Web page, and application at a time. And it's still hard-coded. That's not innovation. It's pathetic.

noisem4ker 6y ago
I fully agree that customization regressed, and it's a pity. However... >paper doesn't EMIT light Your retina doesn't care if the photons it receives are emitted (as with CRTs) or reflected (as with paper). If you feel like you're staring into a lightbulb, your monitor's brightness is set too high. Set it properly, and, in a well lit environment, your monitor's white should match that of the wall behind it, or that of a piece of paper on your desk.

RyanHamilton 6y ago

Thanks for sharing those links. The win95 design was a great read, a proper data driven approach to user experience.