Designing Interfaces, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. What Users Do

This book is almost entirely about the look and behavior of applications, web apps, and interactive devices. But this first chapter is the exception to the rule. No screenshots here; no layouts, no navigation, no diagrams, no visuals at all.

Why not? After all, that’s probably why you picked up the book in the first place.

It’s because good interface design doesn’t start with pictures. It starts with an understanding of people: what they’re like, why they use a given piece of software, and how they might interact with it. The more you know about them, and the more you empathize with them, the more effectively you can design for them. Software, after all, is merely a means to an end for the people who use it. The better you satisfy those ends, the happier those users will be.

Each time someone uses an application, or any digital product, he carries on a conversation with the machine. It may be literal, as with a command line or phone menu, or tacit, like the “conversation” an artist has with her paints and canvas—the give and take between the craftsperson and the thing being built. With social software, it may even be a conversation by proxy. Whatever the case, the user interface mediates that conversation, helping users achieve whatever ends they had in mind.

As the user interface designer, then, you get to script that conversation, or at least define its terms. And if you’re going to script a conversation, you should understand the human’s side as well as possible. ...