I was recently asked if I thought User Interface or iA Designers we artists. Initially my reaction was yes. There is certainly an art form to UI/User-Centered design. But after thinking about what (typically) makes a good UI design, I concluded that there is a distinct difference between an artist and an interface designer. Good art should be seen. A good interface should be transparent.
It’s for this reason that the designer(s) often get overlooked when kudos are thrown around. So how do you admire something that’s not meant to be seen? One way is to rally behind the community that does appreciate it. Which is exactly what we’re going to do.
The magical number 7 is referenced as a persons cognitive ability and how it pertains to short-term memory. Whether you agree with this theory or not is irrelevant to this post. We just thought it was a clever way to give a congratulatory shout out to sites, articles, and people who we feel should get recognition for the work they do from the community, even if they don’t get it elsewhere.
Fuel Your Interface’s, “The Weekly Seven: Plus or Minus Two” will be the weeks five to nine links we think you will find useful. In no particular order…
Blogs Every Interface Designer Should Read
1. ux mag
UX Magazine sets out to explore, promote & discuss the multiple facets of user experience one article at a time. It is built upon the foundations of ProjectNeo, a global interactive design community.
UX Magazine is a collaborative publication by writers, technologists, designers, marketeers & business gurus from around the world. This project was created & developed by C. Demetriadis, H. Mann & A. Schleifer.
2. 37 Signals
Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago.
The creators of Web-Based software Basecamp and Highrise just to name a couple. Most companies talk about customer experience and ease of use, but 37 Signals eat, sleep and breath the stuff.
3. Adaptive Path.com
Our mission is to deliver great experiences that improve people’s lives, while sharing our advances in the field with our clients, partners, and peers. We measure our success by our contribution to smart, agile organizations that are responsive to their users.
A true leader in the Industry, Adaptive Path hosts UI/UX conferences around the world. A millenia of amazing content on their site, enough to inspire even the most seasoned UI veteran.
4. Luke Wroblewski
Publications on the critical details and big picture behind digital product design. LukeW’s eight years of writing cover Web and device strategy, interaction design, visual design, usability, and much more.
LukeW is an internationally recognized digital product design leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 700 million people worldwide.
Luke is currently Chief Design Architect at Yahoo! Inc. where he works on product alignment and forward-looking integrated customer experiences on the Web, mobile, TV, and beyond.
He is the author of two popular Web design books (Web Form Design & Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability) and many articles about digital product design and strategy. Luke is also a consistently top-rated speaker at conferences and companies around the world, and is a co-founder and former Board member of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).
5. Boxes & Arrows
Boxes and Arrows is devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and the design of business. Since 2001, it’s been a peer-written journal promoting contributors who want to provoke thinking, push limits, and teach a few things along the way.
If you’re interested in improving the way information architecture is done, if you find yourself sparking provocative conversation on interaction design topics in your spare time, and if you go out of your way to help everyone in your office think differently about everything from the design process to software, we want to work with you.
Final Thoughts
If you haven’t seen these sites before, we hope that you find them as useful and inspiring as we do. Each week we’ll give you more and more sites, people and posts to get inspired by and hopefully build the community even more!