Great Design - Table of Contents

Articles in gray are still being written. Many of these articles are derived from chapters in User Interface Design for Programmers.

(* = first draft)

Introduction

Introduction to Great Design*
What is Design?*
What Makes It Great?*

Good Design

User Model vs. Program Model
Choices
Affordances and Metaphors
Broken Metaphors
Consistency and Hobgoblins
Modes
Put users in control
Design for Extremes
Users don't read
Users can't control the mouse
Users can't remember anything
Activity Based Design
Usability Testing
Relativity (UI Time Warps)
How Do It Know?
Tricks of the Trade
UIs that Kill
Beta Testing
The Onion in the Varnish
Information Design / Answering the Right Question
Shipping is a Feature

Great Design

Introduction to Black Magic of Great Design
Aesthetics
Emotional Design
Designing the Social Interface
Building Communities
Obsessive Attention to Detail
Taking Things Away
Playing with Fire (making things worse)
User happiness vs. user success

Oh, and by the way: My company, Fog Creek Software, has paid internships in software development for qualified college students. They're in New York City. Free housing, lunch, and more. And you get to work on real, shipping software with the smartest developers in the business.

About the Author: I’m your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz—the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot—the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.

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