People expect effortless, engaging interaction with desktop and web applications, but producing software that generates enjoyable user experiences is much harder than many companies anticipate. With Effective UI, you'll learn proven user-experience strategies that will satisfy your clients and customers, drive business value, and increase brand strength. This book shows you how to capture the collaborative and cooperative spirit among designers, engineers, and management required for building engaging software. You'll also learn valuable methods for maintaining focus throughout the process -- whether you're a product manager who needs a clear roadmap, a developer or designer looking for guidance and advocacy, or a businessperson who wants to understand and manage user-experience software initiatives. Learn how to build software that will: Generate engaging and interactive experiences between consumers and businesses, or between businesspeople and their information systems Account for how people work with, think about, and consume information Establish a richer means of collaboration and communication Reduce frustration by streamlining complex tasks and creating processes that are more intuitive Distinguish products, services, and brands to create a competitive advantage Create scalable systems that adapt to changing user needs and behaviors

User interface design is a challenging, multi-disciplinary activity that requires understanding a wide range of concepts and techniques that are often subjective and even conflicting. Imagine how much it would help if there were a single perspective that you could use to simplify these complex issues down to a small set of objective principles. In UI is Communication, Everett McKay explains how to design intuitive user interfaces by focusing on effective human communication. A user interface is ultimately a conversation between users and technology. Well-designed user interfaces use the language of UI to communicate to users efficiently and naturally. They also recognize that there is an emotional human being at the other end of the interaction, so good user interfaces strive to make an emotional connection. Applying what you learn from UI is Communication will remove much of the mystic, subjectiveness, and complexity from user interface design, and help you make better design decisions with confidence. It's the perfect introduction to user interface design. - Approachable, practical communication-based guide to interaction and visual design that you can immediately apply to projects to make solid design decisions quickly and confidently - Includes design makeovers so you can see the concepts in practice with real examples - Communication-based design process ties everything from interaction to visual design together

Our love affair with the digital interface is out of control. We’ve embraced it in the boardroom, the bedroom, and the bathroom. Screens have taken over our lives. Most people spend over eight hours a day staring at a screen, and some “technological innovators” are hoping to grab even more of your eyeball time. You have screens in your pocket, in your car, on your appliances, and maybe even on your face. Average smartphone users check their phones 150 times a day, responding to the addictive buzz of Facebook or emails or Twitter. Are you sick? There’s an app for that! Need to pray? There’s an app for that! Dead? Well, there’s an app for that, too! And most apps are intentionally addictive distractions that end up taking our attention away from things like family, friends, sleep, and oncoming traffic. There’s a better way. In this book, innovator Golden Krishna challenges our world of nagging, screen-based bondage, and shows how we can build a technologically advanced world without digital interfaces. In his insightful, raw, and often hilarious criticism, Golden reveals fascinating ways to think beyond screens using three principles that lead to more meaningful innovation. Whether you’re working in technology, or just wary of a gadget-filled future, you’ll be enlighted and entertained while discovering that the best interface is no interface.

Most programmers' fear of user interface (UI) programming comes from their fear of doing UI design. They think that UI design is like graphic design—the mysterious process by which creative, latte-drinking, all-black-wearing people produce cool-looking, artistic pieces. Most programmers see themselves as analytic, logical thinkers instead—strong at reasoning, weak on artistic judgment, and incapable of doing UI design. In this brilliantly readable book, author Joel Spolsky proposes simple, logical rules that can be applied without any artistic talent to improve any user interface, from traditional GUI applications to websites to consumer electronics. Spolsky's primary axiom, the importance of bringing the program model in line with the user model, is both rational and simple. In a fun and entertaining way, Spolky makes user interface design easy for programmers to grasp. After reading User Interface Design for Programmers, you'll know how to design interfaces with the user in mind. You'll learn the important principles that underlie all good UI design, and you'll learn how to perform usability testing that works.

Author Jason Ostrander walks developers through the different choices available on their way to creating a well-designed application for Android. While building a simple application, Jason works through the basics of Android UI development including layout, event handling, menus and notifications. The author then shows the proper way to load and display images, create advanced dialogs and progress indicators, add animation, and how to build custom UI elements. Jason discusses the proper way of adding interaction through gestures and the advanced graphical options available using Canvas, Renderscript and OpenGL. Finally, he discusses tablet development, the unique differences between phone and tablet UI, and the new APIs available to tablet developers.

Effective interface animation deftly combines form and function to improve feedback, aid in orientation, direct attention, show causality, and express your brand’s personality. Designing Interface Animation shows you how to create web animation that balances purpose and style while blending seamlessly into the user’s experience. This book is a crash course in motion design theory and practice for web designers, UX professionals, and front-end developers alike.