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I always maintained that to be a good graphical user interface designer, you have to be good at two things: Graphical design, and software conception. I have an odd impression that if it weren’t from my complete inability to draw, I might actually be a good GUI designer.

One of the difficult challenges of software design is to map an inherently complex combination of computing machine states into easy to grasp higher level concepts for end users. And while it may sound eerily similar to making things look simple, it’s actually more difficult since it has to actually still not only make sense (with some kind of internal consistency), but also correctly represent the machine states. Put simply, GUIs shouldn’t (completely) lie and shouldn’t be too hard to grasp. Making things more difficult, to be consistent within a software environment, you may have to restrict yourself to a limited set of widgets, which could potentially make it difficult to fit your own metaphors into whatever tools you’re given.

So, yeah, looking at my own software designs I’m getting pretty good at software conception. If only I could also make it “pretty”.

Published on April 26, 2012 at 21:21 EDT

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