User Experience/Grand Concept/GUI

Radical new GUI Designs

Improving the GUI

STILL A LOT TO DO/WRITE

Intro

Most of the GUI is based on archaic concepts. Many new developments in the field can radically improve user's experience. Special emphasis should be put on new web technologies, especially with regards to interactivity and functionality.

Downside of Existing GUI

• many functions are non-intuitive
• poor interactivity
• many prominent functions/buttons/menus are rarely used or useless (see Useless GUI Elements)
• much wasted space, especially in dialogs
• many areas are badly organized, making the dialog poorly functional, instead of organizing the dialog into functional areas
  • often used features should be grouped together
• dialogs are monochrome, although the human being has a color vision (see Colour Vision

Colour Vision

The human eye is adapted to colour vision. It is therefore strange that so many programs use a monochrome GUI.

While it is true, that colour blindness can impede optimal viewing of a colour GUI, there are some elements that need to be discussed:

• red-green colour blindness is the most frequent form, affecting ~4% of males (different values for different populations and an order of magnitude less in women)
• there are many other forms of colour blindness, including any of the 3 basic colours and any combination thereof (although less often)
• Vitamin A deficiency giving poor vision in the dark is probably quite often encountered in developing nations

Dialogs

Current dialogs are based really on old concepts. Therefore:

• much space is wasted (dead space)
  • user clicks only on very small areas of the dialog and everything else just fills the area
• impaired users find it difficult to click on a very small button/item
• visually impaired users have difficulty viewing some of these small elements inside the dialog

Customize Window

The keyboard customization tab in the customize window