Artistic aspects of UI?

Consider a single button.

At one extreme, we have a black OpenGL window, with:

• outline (in white) of a rectangle
• bitmap remdered font inside of it, saying "Ok"

At the other extreme, we have Mac OS X, a button that is:

• well rounded
• has some gradient showing light effects on it
• nice antialiased "OK"
• soft shadow of some sort

These two UIs present very very different user experiences. The former says "This is from the 80s" the latter says "this is professional".

This is something I do not understand well as a programmer (and don't know where to learn about this).

Does anyone know of a good technical resource for this? [I'd prefer things that draws upon psychology / perception literature to say why to do something rather than design books that just says "use color XYZ with a gradien开发者_JAVA百科t of blah"]

---

Here is something on it. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy

You can check this link out to answer the part of your query in the comment. It has lots of references to samples and some helpful links too. http://www.usernomics.com/user-interface-design.html

The perception and psychology part of designing the UI does not come as any rule or steps, as we all know. It gets developed over time. Making your application user friendly and pleasing, that part of the magic or deal gets added from experience\survey and also you can include layman testing. I do it many times.

Also thinking out of the box. You will get a solution when solve it within the box. But you will get a better solution when you think out of it.

Another useful thing is be a good learner and observer. Note something nice and useful when you visit sites or use other applications. You might not even notice it. It might be something very small or trivial but it makes a lot of difference when it's used in the right places.

---

You will want to read up on Human User Interface guidelines HIG and Usability:

Apple's Human Interface Guidelines

Windows User Experience Guidelines

Platform agnostic guidelines

Amazon has plenty of books on the HIG subject, but I'd also recommend books based on usability. Steve Krug's "Don't make me think" is a great book (mainly tailored for web usability) etc.

---

A classic: The Design of Everyday Things

Pretty quick read, discussed some of the psychology behind using and understanding human interfaces. It's a bit dated and doesn't directly focus on programming GUIs but I would start here.

---

I'd start with Vitruvius' firmness, commodity, and delight. Also Gibson's affordances. Also, many HCI researchers have applied activity theory, with mixed results. Norman's DOET is a good start, but I think it covers only the first 2 of Vitruvius' triad - you're asking about the delight. Might also look at McCloud's Understanding Comics.

---

The Opera web standards curriculum has a very good section on aesthetic aspects, especially regarding color usage. I think it's very useful reading not only for web development, but all application design.

• Chapter 8: Color Theory
• Chapter 9: Building up a site wireframe

There is also a color scheme designer website, which allows you to play around with some of the color theory aspects. Definitely worth a visit.