Y. Karp? Why Not!

A number of years ago, I scoured the Internet looking for a good, free replacement to Outlook Express. I tried a few programs until I hit on one that took my fancy. I think it was an early version of Foxmail . The layout was Outlook Express-ish, but in a more cartoony sort of way, which, for some reason, was appealing. Written by a Chinese developer, the email client's Help was in Cantonese. Thankfully, the UI was in English and the program was quite straightforward so I could figure out most things on my own. I used this email client on my family computer for a number of months and grew to love its quirks and foibles. The UI was decent enough, but the programmer had made a glaring typo and it became customary in our house to SNED an email, instead of SEND it. Although we have moved on to a different email client, from time-to-time we still say SNED, just because. As amusing as it may be, I think that the world has enough experience with software to no longer have to tolerate S...

I recently attended a lecture about Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). One of the main points that the lecturer made was that you have to build the GUI to suit the needs of the users. Users want everything - and what they want may not be what they need. So the important thing is to understand who your users are (demographic, knowledge, limitations, etc). You then have to arrange all of the elements of the GUI to tell a story. That is, you need to define the sequence of actions (the process) such that the GUI helps the user to know where he is, what he is doing, how he got there, and what to do next. As the GUI designer, the story you want to tell includes the order in which the various elements on the page are seen by the user. It is very important that the first thing you see on the screen is one that tells you exactly where you are and gives you some indication of what you can do there. Recently, a question was posed on the Techshoret email list about...