Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems

1-4. Tools That Do Not Facilitate Design Innovation

Creating fine interfaces can require undertaking intensive and expensive work. Interface-building tools, such as Visual Basic or Visual C++, are marketed as lowering development costs and speeding implementation. In spite of their utility, these tools will not be mentioned often in this book; they enshrine current paradigms and thus unduly limit the scope of what you can do. Similarly, the Macintosh or Windows interface guidelines and a portion of the heuristics presented by books on interface design occasionally give advice that is demonstrably incorrect—often due to the company's need to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of the interfaces and to the misperception that users will ...