November 2025
Beginner
404 pages
10h 38m
English
Content preview from Fundamentals of Software Engineering
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Chapter 7. User Interface Design
Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself.
Donald A. Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things
In far too many instances, user interface (UI) design often boiled down to putting input fields wherever they would fit, irrespective of all else. While that may have been the most expeditious approach for the developers, it rarely resulted in the most usable application. Remember, the UI is the what of user experience (UX) and to nearly all users, the UI is the application. Good UI design is based on accomplishing the goals set forth by UX.
UI design is more than just a polished look and feel; it’s about making your application easy to use for your intended audience. Ease of use encompasses a number of topics, including accessibility and inclusivity of UI design. Of course, few software engineers are ever taught the basics of UI design. Although this chapter won’t make you an expert, you’ll be a step ahead of most by the time you’re done reading!
Designing for Everyone
Accessibility, usability, and inclusion are distinct yet interconnected concepts in design that aim to make products usable by people of different backgrounds and abilities. You’ll often see them referred to by their numeronyms: a11y for accessibility, L10N for localization, and I18N for internationalization.
Note
A numeronym ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.