I happened upon interface design advice from a most unlikely source: Uber geek extraordinaire Eric Raymond. His take on interfaces is to apply the rule of least surprise.
“To design usable interfaces, it’s best when possible not to design an entire new interface model. Novelty is a barrier to entry; it puts a learning burden on the user, so minimize it. Instead, think carefully about the experience and knowledge of your user base. Try to find functional similarities between your program and programs they are likely to already know about. Then mimic the relevant parts of the existing interfaces.”
Obvious, maybe, but I love the way it’s phrased here. It’s general enough to be useful to anyone. Heck, it was written for Unix programmers, but I think anyone involved in the Web could get something from it.
For that matter, the whole thing looks pretty good. Jeff Veen lauds it as directly applicable to user experience, information architecture, and design. There’s even a Rule of Simplicity.
The whole thing is available online or in printed form. While you’re at it, check out Joel Spolsky’s excellent book with a similar angle: bringing usability to even the most technical things (and people).
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