Comment by graiz
6 years ago
I actually worked on the followup to this book for the release of Windows XP at Microsoft. You can find it on Amazon if you're interested. https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Experience-Professi...
It was written largely by Tandy Trower (inventor of Clippy) and has many similarities to Apple's original Human Interface Guidelines though very different too.
Yeah I've been consulting this a lot lately. Been writing a data-dense desktop application and trying to make it as good to use on keyboard-only users as it is for mouse-using users.
I figure the closer I get to that, the easier the port to gui.cs will be.
Another good UX book I found was "The Definitive Guide to the .NET Compact Framework" by Larry Roof and Dan Fergus. Yes, it had mostly back-end stuff, but the UX concepts taught the reader to consider his audience.
Is the person using your app likely to be using it in a dock hooked to a full keyboard like you, Mr. Dev?
No, he will be standing next to a cellphone tower wearing gloves and trying to get the Falcon x3 out of the sunlight enough to see what the screen is showing him.
Okay then, make the buttons big enough for a gloved finger to mash, use combo-boxes everywhere you can stand it. So what if its ugly - if its functional and the user never has to use the SIP, then fine.
In all fairness to Tandy's 28 year run at Microsoft (Clippy aside) including his final stint with the Robotics group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Trower
I've had some wonky PDF version of this for years I don't know why it never occurred to me that this was a book I could just buy. I can't wait to have a physical copy to reference!