First of all, please don’t fret out. TamsPalm still is Palm OS focussed and will stay so; elevators will not become our new main topic;). However, the elevator button panel below is a marvel of bad design-sometimes, you press a button and nothing happens. Yee-haa!
Ok, and what does this have to do with my Palm OS application? Trust me, more than you think it has. UI design is very similar to designing elevator ‘guis’-the common goal is simplicity and ease of use!
And this is where small nuissances kick in. On its own, the clicks saved by clever design of the PalmOS, may look unimportant. But once the clicks ‘accumulate’, they will matter.
Users will(and should) use your app often-and even 1 second needed for an extra click will eventually accumulate to something, yeah, big.
Overall, when designing UI(for Palm OS apps), just good is not good enough. Strive for speed-small benefits gang up eventually.
What do you think?
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I agree 100%. I still have a lot to do with tejpWriter to save clicks. The Font selection and Color Theme selection ont the toolbar are good examples as you already has shown. But to create an “as close to perfect UI as possible” takes time. Not always programming time. It’s more about letting the ideas mature. Then suddenly the pieces fits together. That’s how I work at least.
The best is create the first full UI and delete it one second after.
With this thought create a second and delete it again.
The third UI will be good to use!
But whats the only important thing i need? Right functionality!
OK, at first comes functionality and at second the nice UI.
