Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ui

User interface design - what's it actually like?

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:39:42 -0800

What I would like to know is for those of you actually in the field who work in UI/UX design what the day to day is actually like. I have finished attending a university and will be graduating with a degree with user interface design/usability as a concentration. I have a few different career paths directions to go in.

In doing some research and looking over resumes of those who do UX design, it seems like most people do not stay with a particular employer for long. For instance, maybe stay for a year or two max then move onto another employer. Is this due to the nature of the work, the field or since UI is nascent, due to better opportunities opening up?

In addition, I am a bit older of a student and will be 45 soon. I worry that age discrimination could rear it's ugly head and would like to know your thoughts on that as well.

Thanks!

Spinning, exploding Excel-driven web app: How or should it be?

metajc — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:45:34 -0800

Sometimes, I am a front-end web developer. Frequently, I meet new people at work who want to turn really complicated Excel documents into dazzlingly interactive web applications. Besides Excel's "Save to Web App" or "Save to SharePoint" features, such people ask if I can tap into an industry to support this -- perhaps scads of agencies and web-based or downloadable tools that make "websites" or at least customizable, interactive reports from Excel spreadsheets, data, and calculations. I'm yet to find this an abundance of examples of this. Are there? If so, what do you call them? If you use Google Analytics, MailChimp or Hootsuite, you are familiar with bouncing, cheerful report graphs and charts.

I know that those specific tools required teams and years worth of custom programming. I assume that these apps also derive their presentations from databases that are not Excel files. People seem to passionately believe, however, that there has got to be an easy way to pour Excel spreadsheets into a machine that spits out more simplistic but nonetheless animated pie charts, line charts, map charts, bar charts, etc. You can customize the colors and fonts! Click here to add your logo!

I've been Googling all morning and I see a few discussions on StackOverflow about how to pipe data into and out of this or that via Ruby, Python, Django or PHP. I see a few homebrewed applications that sort of do something via Javascript.

For the sake of specification, say I have an excel file with multiple tabs. Each tab has thousands of rows and nearly 50 columns. The existing Excel charts are based on calculations of those tabs. Is there a web or intranet-friendly tool that will eat that spaghetti and excrete more colorful, JQuery-powered whirligigs?

I don't mean to come off as sarcastic to the believers or naive to those who know. It just seems a tall order to me. Hopefully, I'm wrong.

Better search interface

blueyellow — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:49:49 -0800

I'm currently working on an app that does search in a limited domain (travel). The current interface is via a dialog textbox, where the user enters sentences or phrases as queries. While natural language offers lots of flexibility I'm realizing this kind of interface is inherently problematic. First, parsing the natural language can be tricky as there are many possibilities. Second, and probably more important, it's a blind interface. We have various types of data and functionality on how to search and present it. It becomes a kind of guessing game whether the user can form a search query that will hit our data and search capabilities. Unless they happen to hit pay dirt it becomes frustrating for the user. At the same time it feels like the user isn't seeing the best of what we can do for them. I'm sure I'm not the first to run into this. Do you have experience/ideas/research on how to improve/replace such an interface? Thanks

Enable my addiction

chesty_a_arthur — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 07:28:09 -0800

Search interface for Zappos.com that includes more granular price information? Like the above indicates, I'm looking for a search interface for Zappos.com that permits searching in more limited price buckets. I don't know if this is available via their website or whether someone's used their API to develop such a thing. The use case is that I would like to buy, say, cowboy boots, and spend between $180 and $250 on them. (With the current site, you can only choose less than $50, $100, $200 or more than $200, which is just not helpful.)

Can my smartphone simultaneously (i) accept input from my mouse and (ii) send output to my monitor?

foursentences — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 18:28:55 -0800

Can my smartphone simultaneously (i) accept input from my mouse and (ii) send output to my monitor? I have an Android smartphone (Samsung Galaxy SII), which has one microUSB port.

I'd like to hook it up to some computer peripherals: ideally, a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, all at once.

I have this microUSB/USB converter. When I plug a USB mouse into it, I can control a cursor on the screen of the phone.

I am aware of this microUSB/HDMI converter. When you plug a monitor into it, the phone's display is mirrored on the monitor.

Basically, if I could get both of those active at once, I'd be able to interact with my phone using the same user interface I use to interact with my computer.

But there's only one microUSB port on the phone. So what's my next step --
- a microUSB hub, if that exists?
- a regular USB hub, hooked up to all these devices by converter cables?
- this product, a USB hub that also transmits a monitor feed?
- something else?

Has anyone gotten this working? Does anyone know how to do so, or know a reason that one of my plans wouldn't work, or have ideas for a different plan that might?

Thanks in advance for all advice!

Designing an international corporate homepage in 2012

meghosaurus — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 07:42:22 -0800

Looking for some user studies/research about homepage redesign for large global companies. A client has asked for some research to help inform their decision about homepage redesign. They are expanding their North American site to represent their global presence, so there are several inherent decisions about localization in play.

Our proposed design options suggest a range of evolution, from close to where they are now, to new design. They are a little averse to change, so we have to prove our ideas.

Their current design is very billboard-like, which they describe as bold, high-impact, different than any other competitor sites out there. They like its simplicity, cleanliness, and differentiation, which they interpret as a strong brand experience.

Our options included indexible text, promotional space, and some additional messages (in addition to some navigation exploration).

The client feels that these make the site look a lot like competitor sites, though they also acknowledge that their current site might be "old school", akin to the old flash intros that people loved for a while. They also recognize that the similarity between sites might be driven by best practices/design standards, and they are like that because the interface works.

I have a few Nielsen articles, and I'm sure there is more out there. I'd like to give the client 3-4 links to studies, with an abstract of the pertinent info, exploring the strengths/weaknesses of both approaches.

Would appreciate any links or advice from UI/web design experts out there.

Do you have good examples of WYSIWYG / GUI based editors for User Interface or App design?

stackhaus23 — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 03:58:53 -0800

Do you have good examples of WYSIWYG / GUI based editors for User Interface or App design? I'm writing a report on interface design and need to give examples of various WYSIWYG Editors for different purposes. For example:

Flash and/or Fireworks for designing Web Apps and rich content sites.
Dreamweaver for Web design.
Microsoft Expression Blend for UI Design.
Flash combined with Scaleform for Game UI Design.

Are there any other successful interface design tools that I have missed, that use a GUI rather than primarily code based.

Like Pinterest, but not Pinterest

DarlingBri — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:01:05 -0800

I'm looking for more online galleries in the visual design style of Pinterest and Saatchi Online. I'm familiar with the jQuery style that allows images to be displayed like this, but I know there are more examples; it seems like a really dominant trend for art sites, photo sites, and online galleries. I just can't... find any, now that I want to see more implementations. Argh.

All links gratefully accepted.

From Developer to Designer

brenton — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:56:45 -0800

My background is in Web Development, but I just took a "User Interface" Developer position. What are some good resources to help me move from the world of code to the world UI? For example, I usually follow A List Apart. They have a lot of good info that touches both upon code and design. What other good blogs or magazines are out there?

Avoiding confusion with superscript/subscript buttons

piato — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:46:45 -0800

Is there any convention or other way to make subscript / superscript icons look intuitive? I'm trying to design an educational game for teenagers. Over the course of the games they get asked questions on a variety of subjects and they often have to type in the answer.

I’ve hit a slight roadblock, however, with questions about Chemistry, and in particular answers like H2O(subscript) or Fe2+ (superscript). I’m trying to find a way to allow pupils to enter subscript and superscript that’s intuitive for them to use, and I can’t think of anything that works particularly well!

For example, there could be buttons at the end of the textfield marked ‘subscript’ and ‘superscript’, but that will confuse pupils who don’t recognise these
words. Or the buttons could have up and down arrows, but I'm not sure this is in any way better... There's no existing text-formatting palette, so I can't put these icons next to existing font, alignment etc ones.

What's more, it seems like this is a problem that other people must have solved before! Are any of these people you? And if so, how did you do it?

I'd particularly welcome visual examples of good solutions to this conundrum, but any ideas would be good!

How to improve my UI skills?

kindall — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:32:52 -0800

What's the best way to get some user interface design training? The software company I work for lost its UI expert last fall and is looking to beef up its expertise in this field by offering to train interested employees.

As a technical writer by trade, I have often found myself in a user advocate role, pleading for features to be made simpler, and I have long had an interest in usability (pretty much ever since the Macintosh came out). I have done a lot of reading on the topic as well, though nothing much in the last few years.

So now I'm looking for recommendations on where to best spend our training dollars. These can be college courses (assuming they are offered as continuing ed, especially if via the Internet), seminars, and whatever else springs to mind. What would you suggest?

BTW, we develop desktop applications, not Web apps, so I am not very interested in training that focuses on Web apps.

Non-Popup Notifications

phrontist — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:02:36 -0800

What are some well-designed web apps that dynamically add/remove content (notifications) to pages without using lightboxes/overlays?

Tell me about being a UX monkey

jingle — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:48:33 -0800

I think I want to be a UX/UI designer. Tell me about the nitty-gritty of daily life and whether a grad program would be worthwhile. A few months ago, I visited the career center at my university to take a test and talk about the results. My test indicated that I would be happiest with careers in the vein of writing, art, psychology, and teaching. My advisor mentioned UX design. Since then, I've read up on the UX/UI canon, followed a lot of twitters, and visited a godawful number of blogs. And I'm finding I'm fascinated and kind of love interface design.

My background: I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Photoshop, and Illustrator very well, I'm involved in designing a school publication and several club pages, and I've volunteered to do a nonprofit's website. I have graphic design experience. I'm majoring in English, but I plan to minor in compsci and anthro. I'm looking into internships.

Finally, my questions:
- What else can I do to prepare myself for work or a grad program?
- What are your hours like? 40 a week? 45? More? What kind of company do you work for?
- What is your typical day like?
- Did you pursue a MA or PhD? If so, would you recommend it? Did you do HCI, Information Science, or something else?
- How did you end up in your current position? Networking? IxDA job listings? Indeed?

Any other information you want to share would be fantastic.

Great password reset UIs?

odinsdream — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:39:18 -0800

Please share some great user interface examples involving password setup and password reset. We're going to be overhauling our webapp, and one of the huge UI nightmares is our password setup and password reset process. It's fairly standard, but I know I've seen better out there in the wild.

Please share any links you have to either UI guides themselves that talk about password setup and reset, or live examples of sites with great UI surrounding this process.

I'm looking for things that give users live feedback about password selection with AJAX, make it really simple to reset a password if they've forgotten it or their account is locked, potentially with e-mail verification, provide clear messages and wording, visually appealing and functional design, etc., If you've seen anything that hits on any aspect of this, please share.

If you have some startlingly bad examples that might also be helpful in a "do not do this" kind of way.

What are websites that handle the user interface and/or the organization of large amounts of video content well?

jeremias — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:54:01 -0800

What are websites that handle the user interface and/or the organization of large amounts of video content well? I'm specifically looking for sites that handle large numbers of dynamically generated or constantly updated video material in a good way. The type of site I'm thinking of would include Netflix, Khanacademy or Lynda.com. (Not necessarily holding those sites up as *good* examples of ui, just good examples of the type of site I'm interested in).

Since this question is subjective here are some of the points I think are important:

More often than not the site quickly allows you to locate a specific video, which usually means it has . . .

An excellent search engine or interface

Intuitive organization of content

UI that doesn't get in the user's way

For bonus points, if you have examples of sites that *don't* do this well, I'd be interested in hearing about those too.

Thanks!

Specifying where new windows are to appear

foursentences — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:01:40 -0800

Is there a way to specify exactly where, on my screen, each successive new window should appear? The default Windows 7 behavior is this: every time a new window loads, it's slightly displaced from the last -- maybe an eighth of an inch to the left -- and so I have to re-direct it to the location where I want it. I'd like to automate this.

I'm looking to come as close as possible to the following functionality:

1. I open, say, Word; it appears on the left half of my laptop screen.
2. I open another Word window; it appears on the right half of my laptop screen.
3. I open Firefox; it appears on the left half of my external monitor.
4. I open Excel; it appears on the right half of my external monitor.
5. I open another Firefox window. All four "slots" are now filled, so it places the new window in whichever slot was least recently the active window.

If you have advice using Autohotkey, I'd probably be able to implement it, and would be interested. But if a feature along these lines has already been created somewhere, I'd rather not spend time recreating the wheel.

I am aware of (and I use) kluges like WindowPad, WinSplit, and Ultramon -- all very useful, but none of them quite a solution (unless I'm missing some buried feature somewhere in one of them).

Thanks!

What font does your car dashboard use?

Wild_Eep — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:56:08 -0800

Name that font: What font is commonly used on car dashboards? Not for the speedometer numbers and such, but for the 'Unleaded Fuel Only', or the 'Service Engine Soon' text? I know this will probably vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, but I wondered if anyone would have some clues here. It's likely to be sans-serif and in all caps.

Bait & switch job with unemployment benefits.

kellyblah — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:02:39 -0800

What happens when you are on NYS unemployment, you get a job, show up for the first day, and find out the job situation was a bait & switch? A friend went on UI recently in New York, in NYC. She interviewed and received a job where she was told the hours are flexible, the vacation & personal time was 2 weeks a year, and that there would be dental coverage. She went in for her first day today, and was told the hours are not flexible, there is a 90 probation period before she gets any time off, there are no dental benefits, and PTO is five days total, per year. If she doesn't go back, what happens to her unemployment benefits from her last job? Are the discrepancies in what she was originally told when she took the job a valid reason for not continuing with the new job, will this stop her current UI benefits?

Where can I find examples of great UX and IA deliverables.

cuban link flooded jesus — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:59:30 -0800

Where can I find examples of great UX and IA deliverables. I am looking for excellent examples of UX deliverables like wireframes, user persona, site maps, etc. Most of the examples I find seem of pretty middling quality. Is there a place or some particular portfolios that showcase outstanding examples--like a dribbble of UX and IA?

Where's the best place for UX people to work in NYC?

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:37:58 -0800

Where's the best place for UX/UI/IA/ID people to work in New York City? I'm an interaction designer/user experience person at an agency in NYC looking for something new. Khoi Vinh's essay, The End of Client Services, has me thinking that it's time to step away from agency life. I'm sick of:
- insane schedules and scopes of work that exist in a fairytale wonderland
- high staff turnover, coupled with rounds of massive layoffs earlier this year, where I lost 3 fellow UX designers on a 5 person team (60%). My manager is typically traveling between multiple offices and it's getting a little lonely.
- client-side legal stakeholders who don't understand the web (and don't care that they don't understand the web, plus the agency representatives are not "allowed" to talk during their reviews of work)
- the "launch the site and forget it" mentality -- meaning there is little to no chance of testing and iterating on designs due to budget constraints
- being permanently short-staffed, on purpose, to be considered "more efficient" when the workload is light
- being asked to do random tasks because we are short-staffed, like help QA the site and log issues, write business rules, write copy and proofread, help someone find a PSD buried on the server, etc. (we have people that DO these tasks)
- being given crappy tools like Lotus Notes, an old version of Jira, a old PC laptop that can't handle more than one browser being open at the same time, Visio
- very little work/life balance, such that leaving at 5pm feels like sneaking out of the office

Special snowflake details:
- I'm good at making user flows, site maps, user personas, wireframes, functionality specifications, test scripts. I've written user research discussion guides and moderated user research in the past but not in the past 2 years.
- My Photoshop skills are rather rusty, so positions calling for that don't seem to be a good fit & I wouldn't have a portfolio of recent work to show.
- Same goes for my coding skills, and I think a position where I'm programming all of the time would not be a good fit either.
- I have 7 years of UX experience, and 5 year at a my current digital marketing agency. I'm seeing a lot of job postings out there that seem too junior or too senior for me.
- I make in the low six figures a year and would like something comparable.
- On paper, working 50-60 hours doesn't look too bad, but "can you please wireframe as fast as you possibly can" takes a toll after a few years. I'd like my life back, please.

So where's the best place for UX/UI/IA/ID people to work in New York City where projects are managed properly and there is work/life balance?

Google? Startups? Finance? Go in-house somewhere? Go freelance?

What online archives have the best design and UI?

melodykramer — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:52:01 -0800

Have you ever seen an online archive with an unbelievable design for users? A large archival online collection that's easy to navigate, tells you exactly what you want to know, and loads easily? Can you tell me what it is? I'm looking for some design inspiration. If you know of a library, collection, audio collection or archival website with a fantastic design and UI, could you please let me know what it is?

Possible to collect way-retroactive EDD?

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:46:52 -0800

Is it worthwhile to try to talk to EDD about retroactive unemployment benefits? I was laid off due to a union bump in the summer of 2009. The combination of depression, ADD, a big move, totally misguided pride about going on "welfare," and complete unfamiliarity with the EDD process made me file online for unemployment a few weeks late, and then I never received any acknowledgement whatsoever. I didn't call to follow up, and then my previous job recalled me 4 months later. So I just let it go. I think I rationalized the initial procrastination with the expectation that the bad economy would keep me unemployed for a long time, and didn't feel the urgency.

I've been laid off again, this time with nonexistent potential for recall, as the department is shutting down. I filed for unemployment again. This time I filed the moment I was eligible, and this time I received acknowledgement, the claim forms, etc. and am sending in the forms promptly.

Now I am feeling stupid about losing the equivalent of 4 months' UI benefits. Should I bother trying to check with EDD about this? I've heard lots of stories about their nightmarish bureaucracy. I am also worried that bothering them too much will just sort of red flag my claim in general.

Thanks.

Tablet application UI / UX resources

asymptotic — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:33:50 -0800

I'm looking for user interface (UI) and user experience articles, tutorials, and resources specifically targetted at tablet applications. I'm a software developer. Although I have little experience with UI and UX design and implementation I have read several of the "classics"; I'm a big Edward Tufte fan, I've read "Universal Principles of Design", etc.

I'm looking for articles, tutorials, and resources specifically targetting at applications designed to run on tablets. I'm particular open to anecdotes about personal development experiences. Although I will also accept answers that refer to exceptionally well-designed tablet applications I would appreciate some context about why you feel such applications are examples of good design, as opposed to just pointing out to me that they're excellent.

Moreover, technical articles that cover how to implement well-design interfaces on either of Android or Apple iOS platforms is welcome; this is what I'll eventually have to do.

I am not looking for:

single-link posts

Android vs. Apple iOS flame-wars

generic resources about general UI / UX principles

links to Steve Jobs presentations

"OMGBBQ, read everything by Edward Tufte!"

Thanks!

Java App monitoring

blueyellow — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:29:47 -0800

What is a good way to monitor/control a Java application? I need to come to a design decision. I have an application that currently has no UI that will run on multiple machines in different configurations. The application's state will change fairly regularly, lets say once per second. I would like to build a UI so that I can watch the applications running on multiple machines and sometimes send them commands if it's warranted.

What would be the best way to implement this? JMX and a proprietary plugin for VisualVM? A lightweight web server on each application and an Ajax implementation on a web server? Or something else? I don't have experience with either direction so before I pick one I would like some advice about pros/cons and experience with these or similar technologies.

The 'Fox meet the Cleansing Fire

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:01:01 -0800

Where can I find an exhaustive list of possible userChrome.css selectors for Firefox (especially FF4)? I'm looking for an essential cheat sheet like w3schools' CSS reference, something that lists every single customizable class and pseudo-class, and every type of possible value for each. So far I've only been able to find code snippets to accomplish certain things, but nothing comprehensive. Help me unleash my browser's full potential! I just upgraded to the FF4 pre-release, so if anything's new (or deprecated) in that version, it'd be nice if the reference reflected that.