10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs

From Smashing Magazine: Web design consists, for the most part, of interface design. There are many techniques involved in crafting beautiful and functional interfaces. Here’s my collection of 10 that I think you’ll find useful in your work. They’re not related to any particular theme, but are rather a collection of techniques I use in my own projects. Without further ado, let’s get started.
1. Padded block links
2. Typesetting buttons
3. Using contrast to manage focus
4. Using color to manage attention
5. White space indicates relationships
6. Letter spacing
7. Auto-focus on input
8. Custom input focus
9. Hover controls
10. Verbs in labels

Don’t use a technique just because it exists: use it if it makes sense in your context.Dmitry Fadeyev

The 5 habits of highly effective project teams

Suzy Thompson (Senior Interaction Design Consultant at Cooper) has written an article on 5 habits of successful project teams:
1. Establish structure and discipline
2. Act with urgency
3. Cultivate a sense of ownership
4. Lead
5. Be the change you want to see in the project


Projects succeed when project managers and team members alike operate with discipline, urgency, ownership, and leadership.

The Secret of Apple Design

In this exciting article about Apple’s design approach, Don Norman, who used to be VP of advance technology at Apple from 1993 to 1998, says:
”The hardest part of design, especially consumer electronics,” says Norman, “is keeping features out.” Simplicity, he says, is in itself a product differentiator, and pursuing it can lead to innovation.

Nice article on interaction design.

Definition of Design

Frank Spillers has defined the design for usability. He breaks the definitions down to those for the Mind, those for the Heart and those for the Body which convey the true essense of design. I've summarized a short blurb for each definition below.
1. Design for the Mind
User Interface Design - focuses on user interactions and screen behaviors
Information Architecture - used to review, concept and test initial functionality
Interaction Design - focuses on how the user interacts with a page, application or product
2. Design for the Heart
Graphic Design - the "eye-candy or look and feel"
Interactive Design - great at graphic design and has a sensitivity and sensibility for usability
Emotion Design - concerned with the specific social, environmental, personal and intimate qualities of user experience
3. Design for the Body
Industrial Design - design for physical products
4. Holistic Methodologies
User Centered Design - involves three key activities: User research; UI prototyping and Usability Testing
User Experience Design - adds a more holistic element to the technique of designing the user experience
Experience Design - approach or methodology that penetrates all design decisions but with an experiential or environmental agenda

Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox
Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult.
This article is not about left-hand menu or right-hand menu, it talks only about alignments.

Open Source - Social Software Applications

This list will give you links to 40 open source resources to get you started building your own social bookmarking, networking, filesharing or search application. Max has listed some best open source resources.

12 things journalists need to know

As future/foresight reporting is all the rage nowadays, it's worth going back and taking a look at the 12 points Jamais Cascio had written a year ago:

1. Nobody can predict the future
2. Not everyone is surprised by surprises
3. Even when it's fast, change feels slow
4. Most trends die out
5. The future is usually the present, only moreso
6. There are always options
7. Dinosaurs lived for over 200 million years
8. Gadgets are not futurism
9. Sports scores and stock quotes" was 1990s futurist-ese for "I have no idea;" "social networking and tagging" looks to be the 2000s version
10. Technology is anything invented since you turned 13
11. The future belongs to the curious
12. The future is process, not a destination.