Design for developers

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I would like to give some context to this
presentation. These slides are from a 2 hour
presentation called Design for Developers.

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The goal of Design for Developers is to teach
interface design as a set of rules: there are
some good default values for a lot of design
decisions that you should remember, there is a
scientific way of approaching things like
alignment, even though many designers will tell
you its something you should feel.

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Some slides only contain a few words or
images so the slides dont distract from what
is being said. Since you are probably viewing
this online, I reworked the entire presentation
and added these sticky notes to add what I
talked about when displaying the slide. They
look like this.

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1 Introduction & design theory -
2 Practical tips and tricks -
3 Practical tips and tricks, cont. -
4 Q&A: throughout -

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Introduction

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My name is Johan
Wolf or @wolfr_ on the internet

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I run a little freelance
design studio

Wolfs Little Store

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I read stuff all day

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I like to play video games

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I love to write

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12
 So this is my companys website, ( http://
wolfslittlestore.be/ ) as you can see its
mostly about interface design. Under work
you can see I do a lot of stuff; webdesign,
logos, HTML & CSS, design for iOS. But all of
it comes down to designing interfaces.

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The kind of design I do is interface design...

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Its not about the WOW!

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 I dont really care too much for interactive
presentations or branded games. While they
have their right to exist as promotional
material, its not the kind of work I want to
spend my life doing.

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Its about creating a great product

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Its about creating a great product

Take something that blows and make it

better. Thats probably what the people at
Dyson were thinking when they applied their
vacuum knowledge to hand dryers.

Product of the year for me.

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Avoiding this...

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Youve got the power

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Youve got the power

I think everyone has the power to make a

good product because its more about
knowledge and applying that knowledge
instead of having strong visual skills. I
believe we can extract a lot of rules from
common design knowledge. Thats what Im
gong to do in this talk.

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Theory
Lets start with some theory on what makes a
good interface.

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What is a good
interface?

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It depends.

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Examples of desirable qualities

Fast Easy to use

Fun Accessible
When thinking about interfaces, and what
youre going to make, you make a list of
desirable qualities we want our interface to
have.

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Fast
Fast (app performance)

Fast (time to task completion)

Maybe we want our interface to be fast in

terms of performance or we want it to be
fast in terms of task completion.

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Easy to use
If we make our application easy to use, that
might just hurt productivity (e.g. no advanced
mode, lack of shortcuts, wizards for
everything).
Productivity
Even though I like to design interfaces for the
general public I have a special love for
advanced modes and ways to get your task
done ASAP even if it requires some training/
learning.

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Considerations
Build accessible apps
because its the right
thing to do (morally)
Accessible
Does anyone in the
intended audience
have a disability?
e.g. cockpit software
for F16 pilots
Do we have the dev
resources to focus on
accessibility?

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 Lets take this interface for example. I havent
ever used it to be honest, but this us Lotus
123, the competitor to Excel back in the days
of MS DOS.

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Not easy to use/learn Inaccessible

Fast (performance) Fast task completion

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 If we list our desirable qualities and compare
them with the program we have here, we
might come to the conclusion that its not
easy to learn, not accessible (to persons with
sight or hearing disability for example; there
is no VoiceOver like on Mac, there is no
multitasking to run something like JAWS in
the background.

On the positive side, its probably blazing

fast on current computers, and since its all
keyboard based I can only guess the time to
task completion is also pretty good.

Not easy to use/learn Inaccessible

Fast (performance) Fast task completion

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 Lets expand on this example with another
example, a Point of Sale system. A POS
system is used at a register, when you go to
a shop and buy something basically.

Example: POS system

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 Would you want this...

Fun Easy to use Fast?

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...this...

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Or this?

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The opposition between making an
application easy to use vs. making it so you
can complete your task quickly becomes
clear here... since the employees in our
imaginary shop all get trained do we really
want to use the slick Easy to use system
when maybe we want the system that
enables us to do our task as fast as
possible?

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Theres a Belgian supermarket, Colruyt, that
tests everything, optimizes everything, and I
think they thought long and hard about their
register/cashier system too. Its not very
modern, but employees know how to work
the system in an efficient manner because
they are trained to do so and the software
enables them to be fast.

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Would you rather bit F5 + F8 to serve a
customer or go through a wizard with next/
previous options?

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Business...

The appropriate interface helps with the

business side of things of course. Wikipedia
says Colruyt has a cool 475 million profit in
book year 2009-2010.

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(I hate shopping there)

Unfortunately the experience of shopping

there is not really what I want, Id rather pay
a bit more and dont feel like Im shopping
around in a prison. But that might just be me.

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Why did I put this theory part in the presentation? I want everyone to think
about what theyre building and for who theyre building it.

Even though kids are growing up with computers these days, the current
generation of software is becoming flat and less usable to expert users.
While I <3 Apple software a lot of what they do feels dumbed down. Im very
frustrated making this 150+ slides presentation in Keynote because there is
no automation whatsoever. I cant align things automatically, I have to copy
paste this note thing from slide to slide manually.

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Some assumptions

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Goals
You want your designs to look passable
without the intervention of a dedicated
(expensive) designer
You want to be able to create web
applications on your own, or with a team of
developers only
With a little time and some tricks this is not
hard to do, especially for web applications

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Youre a developer so:
You use your IDE and never ever open
Photoshop or Illustrator unless you have to
You write scripts to solve problems
You love your terminal and database schemes,
not so much your ruler and color palettes (if you
have them)

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Web developer,
Windows software developer,
Java, Ruby or iOS fanatic:

Good interface =
same principles
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Web developers have a bit of an edge:

CSS
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Web developers have a bit of an edge:

CSS Shareable design

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Who in the audience has ever tried to learn Photoshop?
Its big and vast... theres many tools and palettes and its easy to get lost.

I took me years to become productive in Photoshop and I understand why

people are advocating designing in the browser.

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 Text

I feel at home here, I know what to do, I have the shortcuts in my fingers, I
know what all the tools and palettes do.

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You dont have to learn Photoshop (or any graphics program for that matter)
to deliver a proper software design. As I said before its a matter of
knowledge and applying this knowledge. As a web developer you have an
extra edge in a sense that you can apply design frameworks easily thanks to
the power of HTML (structure) and CSS (presentation) whereas sharing the
design of one Java app with another is not convenient, if even possible.

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Practical tips & tricks
Now... on to the real meat of the
presentation. The practical tips and
tricks. What youve been waiting for I
guess!

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 Practical tips & tricks (1)
A Typography -
B Alignment -
C Light & shadow -

I divided this up in sections, first up are typography, alignment and light and
shadow. These are the most important parts.

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Typography

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Readability

Generally you want a readable typeface, in

interface design you want a very readable
typeface that works in small sizes
This leaves you with very little choice on the
web:
Verdana The quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog

Lucida Grande The quick brown fox jumps

(Fallback: Lucida Sans Unicode) over the lazy dog

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 Droid Sans comes with Android and is also optimized for small size display;
Segoe UI is the font used in Windows Phone 7 and parts of the new
Windows I think. Solid choice if youre doing Microsoft software.

Droid Sans The quick brown fox jumps

over the lazy dog

Segoe UI

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Why these fonts?
Specifically designed for UI: compare
Verdana to Times: which will be more
legible at small sizes?

Verdana at 36px Times at 36px

If youre interested in typography at all, and you want to know

more why this is like it is, try http://typophile.com/node/12028
Why these fonts?
Hinted at low sizes

The two fonts at the bottom

will not be named... hint: one
is universally hated by
designers and the other
caused a stir when it was
used as the subtitle for
James Camerons Avatar
Gill Sans
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud
exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure
dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit
anim id est laborum.

Palatino
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis
nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu
fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in
Some
culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. fonts have their roots
in print, they are wonderful if
used for the right purposes.
Gill
elit,Sans is a great typeface
Impact
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim with British
ad minim roots,
veniam, Palatino
quis nostrud
could consequat.
exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo be perfect Duisfor
auteairure
book,
dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillumand
doloreImpact, wel...
eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt
mollit anim id est laborum.

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Impact ... probably good if you want
to make an IMPACT.

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Why some fonts are better for interfaces than others

Verdana
1iIL
Gill Sans
1iIL
Heres the same character
string in Verdana and Gill As you can Excel set in Gill Sans might
Sans. give some problems: what if you need cell
I1, you would read it as II

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 zero versus o: difference can be critical

A crossed zero can make the difference between a font that works for financial applications and one that
doesnt. Maybe you want to display a serial number that has both O and 0 (zero) in it. This i from a blog post
about Axel by my favorite typographer, Erik Spiekermann. http://www.fontshop.be/details.php?entry=386 . Its
a very economical typeface perfect for spreadsheets.

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Font sizes

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 Relative readability

This is a pretty well known picture among designers, it displays the relative readability between a book and a
blog post on a screen set in 16px. Basically we all use type sizes that are way too low. 16px works for reading.
Why not use this browser default instead of making the text tiny?

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Font sizes

When in doubt, make it larger, especially if its

for reading (any long form content in
paragraph form)
All texts on the web that are meant to be
read should be at least 14px big!

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Font sizes

You can go smaller in interface depending

on your font, e.g. if you use Lucida Grande
or Verdana you could go for 11, 12 or 13px.

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What is wrong with this picture?

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Reading length
There's a reason newspapers are set in
columns, that books are not wider than they
are... practical printing reasons, but also a
scientific reason: it's harder to read a text when
lines are too long
Rule of thumb: paragraphs should never be
longer than 60 characters, so limit them in
width

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Why is my type
so boring?

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Font services
Use Typekit ($50/yr for low traffic sites)
Use Webtype if you have money ($40/yr/
typeface)
There are very little fonts in Google web fonts
currently that are worth using
Use with caution (performance, quality of
fonts)
Good design is not free in general

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All efforts to optimize for performance on my own Wolfs Little
Store website were kind of cancelled out by using 2 fonts from an
external web provider. If you care about performance at all, dont
use @font-face.

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 Line height makes all the difference:

1.5 line height 72 1.0 line height

Line height

I keep returning to these same values:

Use a line-height of 1.1 for headings
Use a line-height of 1.5 for paragraphs

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Alignment

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How to align things?!

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 How to align things?!

Much has been written about the dark art

of aligning things: theres whole books
about aligning and grid systems, mostly
dealing with paper sizes and proportions.
I want to show you 3 things that might
make you better at aligning without
having to overthink it.

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Alignment

Law of proximity (gestalt)

Screen interface design: work with the number 6. 6,
12, 18, 36... (example)
Grid design example
Use space appropriately

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Law of proximity

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 The law of proximity

The law of proximity Spatial or

temporal proximity of elements may
induce the mind to perceive a
collective or totality.

Wikipedia

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The law of proximity

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 The law of proximity

As you can see, the left circles form a

group, on the right side theres 3 groups,
all of this is done by spacing between
elements only. Why is this so important
and what does it have to do with UI
design?

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The law of proximity

The law of proximity says that elements

that are closer together will be perceived
as a group. Since the spacing is even
between every comment here its hard to
find out who wrote which comment.

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The law of proximity

Compare this to a design where there is

clear spacing between the comments.
The author is on top (as per convention)
and the avatar reinforces who is talking.

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I keep returning
to the number

6
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 Base font size: Base line height (x1.5)

2x6
12 = 18px 3x6

Reading font size: Base line height (x1.5)

16 = 24px 4x6

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6px as our unit

Major elements spacing 6 units

Regular spacing 4 units
Minor spacing 2 units

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Example

This part of the presentation is about how

I keep returning to the number 6 for
aligning and spacing UI elements. It
makes sense: all the numbers we use for
our defaults (1.5 line height, 16px font
size for reading, etc.) form multiples of 6
when used in simple calculations: 12, 18,
24, 36, ...

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 Start off with a grid, I used an online grid
calculator (here: http://www.29digital.net/
grid/ ) and defined my column and gutter
widths so are multiples of 6.

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 Heres that same grid visualized. I used
Photoshop but you might as well do it in
HTML/CSS if youre used to that.

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 As you can see, if we think of 6 as our
unit, there are 4 units between columns,
and each column is 16 units wide.

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 I add some elements to the interface...

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 ...a header area, a content area...

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 The height of content area if flexible, for
the header I used a multiple of 6 again.

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 For the spacing between the areas I used
a multiple of 6 again. Its easy, just keep
returning to the number 6.

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 I add some text, this is from Moby Dick
(book in the public domain). Now, it still
looks like **** so lets do something about
that.

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 I set the font to 16px since this is my
default for reading, then add spacing
between the paragraphs.

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 I add a heading which has a font size of
24px, once again tying into the number 6

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 Look, the spacing between elements is
not arbitrary, its all a multiple of 6, and
the reason I made my paragraph 4
columns wide ties into the line length
reasoning as discussed earlier. Its a
ruleset that makes sense.

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 I move the text to the middle since I want
to add a navigation etc. to the website.

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 I know how my grid works so I dont need
to display it all the time now. I go to my
standard colors (more on that later).

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 I keep on designing... again keeping 6 in
the back of my head. For example, the
padding in the comments is 12px, and
the line height of the navigation items is
24px.

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 We have a design that looks passable
without much designing really: we applied
some guidelines, thats it.

Im not saying it looks like the bomb, but

we have a solid base to work upon here.

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 I use this strategy all the time, look at my
site, all the spacing is based on 6...

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 This might be a bit more clear.

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Keep returning to
the number

6
105
Use space appropriately

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Use space appropriately

This is the Netflix iPad app, Im all for

proper whitespace, but this is just not an
appropriate design for the iPad. You have
all this space, why not use it e.g. to
display the film posters too?

It looks like they just stretched out the

existing iPhone app. This is a common
problem with most Android tablet
software these days.

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Use space appropriately

Compare with something like the

iPhoto design for iPad that makes
appropriate use of the space. Big fan
of the designer www.mikematas.com

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Light & shadow

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 Shadows and gradients rule #1:

Use shadows and

gradients as a tool, not
as decoration

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Think of real life

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 Take a second to look at this photo
and look at the reflections, the knobs,
the shadows being cast.

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In real life...
Shadows are never pure black (radiosity)
Objects higher than other objects cast a
shadow on the lower object
Some surfaces are reflective and some are
not
When we press a button it lowers
Light is cast from a direction

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 Shadows are never pure black

The first box looks kinda like what you would see in a common developer
design. Try to soften it a bit more by using a greyish tint (middle), I like to
make my shadows a bit blueish grey (third box). Its kinda hard to see but
all the little details together often make a design great instead of just good.

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Drop Shadows will ruin your design if you
don't do it right. Things should be right up
against their surface which means using a
1-3px Drop Shadow size. And 0-3px
distance. This isn't WordArt.

Mike Rundle, flyosity.com

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 Window shadow

The window shadow on Mac OSX is a bit overdone but it does make a
good example that you should think of objects on top (windows, modals)
to be physically on top and thus cast a shadow. This helps with the
metaphor and helps people understand what theyre seeing.

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Recipe for a good button!

Light to dark gradient

Try to think of light as
coming from a certain
direction. The most natural
direction is from the top (e.g.
the sun). Thus, a light
coming in from the top
would make the top part of a
button lighter, and the
bottom part darker. This is
why your gradient runs from
light to dark, not just
because you thought it looks
nice.

Clear verb Clear lines

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Recipe for a good button!

Distinctive active state

Its not realistic to change
the color of a button when
you press it but it does help
to reinforce which button
was clicked.

In real life the button would

probably lower a bit thus
creating an inner shadow.

Inner shadows work for

pressed look

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 Dont just flip the gradient direction!

Just flipping the gradient

direction is the equivalent of
the environment light
Light changing direction when you

direction hover over/click a button,

this makes zero sense.

Its also way too subtle.

Light
direction

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 Most interfaces: think of light coming in
from a 120 angle

Text inputs have shadows Modal boxes cast a 120 drop

on the top and left shadow (more shadow on bottom
and right), be subtle

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Practical tips & tricks (2)

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 Practical tips & tricks (2)
A Color -
B Icons -
C Reusable design -

Next up are three parts, the first about color, then icons, and to end reusable
design.

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Color

123
Ways to pick colors

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125
 Hues app for Mac is pretty
cool, and its only 2

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 Hues is a good replacement
for the standard digital color
meter.

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Easy coloring: 3 values

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 I only ever use 3 colors to
start with, to establish some
hierarchy.

129
Blending
If you do work with more color its a good idea
to think about blending them a bit for a more
natural and considered design.

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131
132
133
134
135
136
137
 Try to use a darker version
of the background color as
your text color, this will look
better than just pure grey or
black.

138
 Campaign Monitor does a
good job at blending colors.

139
 Theres a green background, dark green for the
heading, some softer green for the text, and
then a clear button. All work very well together,
of course, theyre all variations on the same
color.

140
 For example, heres the page title, instead of
just using white they used a tint of blue,
blending properly with the background color.
This looks better.

141
 I dont use too much color to make a point
about simplicity.

(I also dont have this 6th sense for colors

that some designers seem to have)

142
 Im not the only designer just resorting to
B&W, heres http://www.subtraction.com/ by
internet famous Khoi Vinh.

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 Kuler might be a good tool for color but I
dont really work with too many palettes in
interface design, I mostly stick to what I
know that works already (white/grey/black +
accent colors + standard message colors,
e.g. red for error and green for success)

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 I dont have a sixth sense for color, I can
apply the color theory I know, but mostly UI
design doesnt need a lot of color, so I
wouldnt worry too much about it either.

145
Fake harmony

A way to fake color harmony in a kind of

engineered way. See the video at http://
methodandcraft.com/videos/creating-harmonious-
color-schemes

146
 This is Campaign Monitor again, here they use a
shade of dark grey with a blueish tint instead of
just dark grey on a white background. I often do
this too, it looks prettier and adds some life to a
page. (you can apply the same logic to buttons,
backgrounds, etc.;

147
148
149
150
Contrast Not everyone has an Apple Cinema
display: most people have a cheap
computer with a crappy screen. If you
#EEE (very light grey) is evil, use a light grey like #EEE then theres

use at least #D5D5D5 (grey) a huge chance only part of your

audience is going to see it. Pro tip:
Test your designs on your mothers
computer.

You can even see the difference in

screen quality between a Macbook
and an iMac. The Macbook has much
worse contrast, especially if the
screen angle is not optimal.

What they see What you think they see

151
Icons

152
Icons Not so much to say about icons,
theyre an essential part in the
interface to easily recognize actions
and parts without having to think too
much.

Invest in a good icon set

Pixel icons are ideal for web applications
FamFamFam will only get you so far

153
 FamFamFam (www.famfamfam.com)
is a free set, often used, Im kind of
tired of seeing it all over the place.

154
 Even multi million dollar companies
get away with still using FamFamFam.

(I think they should hire an icon designer and redo

their visual design a bit... the product is great
though and thats what matters in the end.)

155
Collect good things in your personal library

I went freelance in January. Must have spent over

800 on icons this year. I consider it an investment,
since drawing custom icons for every project would
be a disservice to my clients with so many good
sets out there.

156
Picons is pretty good: http://picons.me/

157
I like Pictos too, http://pictos.drewwilson.com/

158
 Something relatively new: @font-face icon fonts.
Try Fico, by Belgian designer Lennar Schoors.
http://fico.lensco.be/

159
 Icon rule #1:

Only use an icon

when it's well known,
otherwise use text, or
text + icon

160
Example 1

What does this mean? Its pretty clear... we know

this from traffic, we know the exclamation mark,
it means warning.

161
Ambiguity

This one is a little tricky. The right button below

means add, and I can see that the toggle
switches between a grid and a last view, but what
about the loop icon? Does it mean zoom? Does it
mean view details?

Multiple meanings are a common icon problem,

this can be resolved by using labels.

162
Text + icon when in doubt

When in doubt, use text + icon, like here.

The top two icons (refresh and add) are pretty

clear and dont need a label

163
Reusable design

164
Just like you create functions to reuse
in code, you should have a design
library with elements you can reuse
(Web devs have it easy thanks to CSS)

165
 Bootstrap from Twitter is possibly the best
looking design framework Ive seen: http://
twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

166
A lot of the knowledge mentioned in this
presentation is applied perfectly in Bootstrap.

Hooray for http://www.markdotto.com/ !

167
 This site for example was coded up with
Bootstrap in one evening by a developer with few
visual skills. Looks passable, even good to me!

168
jQuery Mobile recently released 1.0, if youre
doing something thats mobile only, this might be
a good framework candidate.
I played around with the beta and they do a lot of
things right by default.

169
 Theres frameworks out there for responsive
design too, http://goldengridsystem.com/

170
 Avoid frameworks that look dated. Not every
framework is good.

171
Extras

172
Dont remove outlines!

http://webexpedition18.com/articles/useful-css-snippets/

173
Be consistent

174
Dont put everything on the same screen

175
Text is interface/Tone can make all the difference

176
So, this presentation is coming to an end.

As we walked through typography, alignment, light & shadow,

color, icon usage and reusable design I hope you learned
something new that you can apply to your work to make it better.

Theres certain parts of designing that we can make into

guidelines and rules of thumb. Applying these rules will make
your design better and in many cases good enough.

Nothing beats a dedicated designer though!

177
If you want to become a smarter person read every single book
and article mentioned on the following slide.

178
Web resources
http://flyosity.com/tutorial/crafting-subtle-realistic-user-interfaces.php http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

http://www.wilsonminer.com/posts/2008/oct/20/relative-readability/ http://jquerymobile.com/
http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button http://goldengridsystem.com/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx http://subtlepatterns.com/
http://www.asktog.com/columns/076AppleFlatlandPart2.html
http://www.mikematas.com/
http://www.asktog.com/columns/075AppleFlatlandPart1.html
http://pictos.drewwilson.com/

http://picons.me/

http://fico.lensco.be/

Books Designing the obvious by Robert Designing the obvious by Robert

Defensive Design for the Web: How
to improve error messages, help,
forms, and other crisis points by
Jason Fried & Matthew Linderman
Designing Web Usability by Jakob
Nielsen
Dont make me think! by Steve Krug
Hoekman Jr. Hoekman Jr.
Designing for interaction by Dan
The Elements of Typographic Style
Saffer
by Robert Bringhurst
Getting Real by 37signals http://
gettingreal.37signals.com/ Detail in Typography by Jost Hochuli

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