Artistic aspects of UI?

Question

Consider a single button.

At one extreme, we have a black OpenGL window, with:

• outline (in white) of a rectangle
• bitmap remdered font inside of it, saying "Ok"

At the other extreme, we have Mac OS X, a button that is:

• well rounded
• has some gradient showing light effects on it
• nice antialiased "OK"
• soft shadow of some sort

These two UIs present very very different user experiences. The former says "This is from the 80s" the latter says "this is professional".

This is something I do not understand well as a programmer (and don't know where to learn about this).

Does anyone know of a good technical resource for this? [I'd prefer things that draws upon psychology / perception literature to say why to do something rather than design books that just says "use color XYZ with a gradient of blah"]

Answer 1

Here is something on it. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy

You can check this link out to answer the part of your query in the comment. It has lots of references to samples and some helpful links too. http://www.usernomics.com/user-interface-design.html

The perception and psychology part of designing the UI does not come as any rule or steps, as we all know. It gets developed over time. Making your application user friendly and pleasing, that part of the magic or deal gets added from experience\survey and also you can include layman testing. I do it many times.

Also thinking out of the box. You will get a solution when solve it within the box. But you will get a better solution when you think out of it.

Another useful thing is be a good learner and observer. Note something nice and useful when you visit sites or use other applications. You might not even notice it. It might be something very small or trivial but it makes a lot of difference when it's used in the right places.