归根结底，这真的是关于同理心——你能站在用户的角度考虑问题吗?

当然，有一件事是有帮助的，那就是“吃你自己的狗粮”——以真正的用户身份使用你的应用程序，看看什么是令人讨厌的。

另一个好主意是找到一种方法来观察使用应用程序的真实用户，这可能是一个复杂的可用性实验室，有单向反射镜、屏幕视频捕捉、用户身上的摄像机等，也可能是简单的纸上原型，使用下一个碰巧走过大厅的人。

如果所有这些都失败了，请记住，UI过于简单总是比过于复杂要好。我们很容易说“哦，我知道如何解决这个问题，我只要添加一个复选框，这样用户就可以决定他们喜欢哪种模式”。很快你的UI就太复杂了。选择一个默认模式，并使首选项设置为高级配置选项。或者干脆不提。

如果你读了很多关于设计的书，你很容易就会被阴影和圆角等问题所困扰。那不是重要的东西。简单性和可发现性非常重要。

duffymo提醒了我为什么:许多程序员认为“*设计”=“美术”。

好的UI设计绝对不具有艺术性。它遵循坚实的原则，如果你有时间做研究，可以用数据来支持。

我认为所有程序员需要做的就是花时间学习原理。我认为我们的本性是尽可能地应用最佳实践，无论是在代码中还是在布局中。我们所需要做的就是让自己意识到我们工作这方面的最佳实践是什么。

开发者不一定擅长UI设计，就像他们不一定擅长编织一样;这很难，需要练习，让别人先教你怎么做也无妨。

大多数开发人员(包括我)开始“设计”ui，因为这是编写软件的必要部分。除非一个开发人员努力去精通它，否则他/她是不会精通的。

一个有用的框架是积极地考虑你在设计一个沟通过程时所做的事情。在非常真实的意义上，你的界面是一种语言，用户必须使用它来告诉计算机该做什么。这导致我们考虑以下几点:

Does the user already speak this language? Using a highly idiosyncratic interface is like communicating in a language you've never spoken before. So if your interface must be idiosyncratic at all, it had best introduce itself with the simplest of terms and few distractions. On the other hand, if your interface uses idioms that the user is accustomed to, they'll gain confidence from the start. The enemy of communication is noise. Auditory noise interferes with spoken communication; visual noise interferes with visual communication. The more noise you can cut out of your interface, the easier communicating with it will be. As in human conversation, it's often not what you say, it's how you say it. The way most software communicates is rude to a degree that would get it punched in the face if it were a person. How would you feel if you asked someone a question and they sat there and stared at you for several minutes, refusing to respond in any other way, before answering? Many interface elements, like progress bars and automatic focus selection, have the fundamental function of politeness. Ask yourself how you can make the user's day a little more pleasant.

实际上，很难确定程序员认为界面交互是什么，除了交流过程之外，但问题可能是它根本没有被认为是任何东西。

我发现UI设计中最好的工具是观察第一次使用该软件的用户。做大量的笔记，问他们一些问题。永远不要指挥他们或试图解释软件是如何工作的。这是UI(以及编写良好的文档)的工作。

我们在所有项目中始终采用这种方法。看到一个用户以一种你以前从未考虑过的方式处理软件总是令人着迷的。

为什么UI设计这么难?一般来说，因为开发者和用户从来不见面。

用户界面不像一层薄薄的油漆，是事后才可以涂上去的。它需要从一开始就存在，并基于真正的研究。当然，有大量可用性研究可用。它不仅需要在一开始就存在，它还需要构成你制作软件的核心原因:世界上存在一些差距，一些问题，它需要变得更可用和更有效。

软件不是为了它自己而存在的。软件存在的原因是为了人们。这绝对是荒谬的，甚至试图提出一个新的软件的想法，而不理解为什么人们会需要它。然而，这种情况一直在发生。

在编写每一行代码之前，您应该先检查界面的纸质版本，并在真人身上进行测试。这有点奇怪和愚蠢，它最适合孩子们，有人扮演“电脑”。

界面需要利用我们自然的认知能力。穴居人会怎么使用你的程序?例如，我们已经进化到非常擅长追踪移动的物体。这就是为什么使用物理模拟的界面，比如iphone，比即时发生变化的界面效果更好。

We are good at certain kinds of abstraction, but not others. As programmers, we're trained to do mental gymnastics and backflips to understand some of the weirdest abstractions. For instance, we understand that a sequence of arcane text can represent and be translated into a pattern of electromagnetic state on a metal platter, which when encountered by a carefully designed device, leads to a sequence of invisible events that occur at lightspeed on an electronic circuit, and these events can be directed to produce a useful outcome. This is an incredibly unnatural thing to have to understand. Understand that while it's got a perfectly rational explanation to us, to the outside world, it looks like we're writing incomprehensible incantations to summon invisible sentient spirits to do our bidding.

普通人能理解的抽象概念包括地图、图表和符号。小心符号，因为符号是一种非常脆弱的人类概念，需要有意识的精神努力来解码，直到学会符号。

The trick with symbols is that there has to be a clear relationship between the symbol, and the thing it represents. The thing it represents either has to be a noun, in which case the symbol should look VERY MUCH like the thing it represents. If a symbol is representing a more abstract concept, that has to be explained IN ADVANCE. See the inscrutable unlabled icons in msword's, or photoshop's toolbar, and the abstract concepts they represent. It has to be LEARNED that the crop tool icon in photoshop means CROP TOOL. it has to be understood what CROP even means. These are prerequisites to correctly using that software. Which brings up an important point, beware of ASSUMED knowledge.

我们大约在4岁左右才能获得理解地图的能力。我记得我曾经在什么地方读到过，黑猩猩在六七岁左右获得了理解地图的能力。

The reason that guis have been so successful to begin with, is that they changed a landscape of mostly textual interfaces to computers, to something that mapped the computer concepts to something that resembled a physical place. Where guis fail in terms of usability, is where they stop resembling something you'd see in real life. There are invisible, unpredictable, incomprehensible things that happen in a computer that bare no resemblance to anything you'd ever see in the physical world. Some of this is necessary, since there'd be no point in just making a reality simulator- The idea is to save work, so there has to be a bit of magic. But that magic has to make sense, and be grounded in an abstraction that human beings are well adapted to understanding. It's when our abstractions start getting deep, and layered, and mismatched with the task at hand that things break down. In other words, the interface doesn't function as a good map for the underlying software.

有很多书。我读过的两本，因此可以推荐给你，一本是唐纳德·诺曼的《日常事物的设计》，另一本是杰夫·拉斯金的《人机界面》。

I also reccomend a course in psychology. "The Design of Every day Things" talks about this a bit. A lot of interfaces break down because of a developer's "folk understanding" of psychology. This is similar to "folk physics". An object in motion stays in motion doesn't make any sense to most people. "You have to keep pushing it to keep it in motion!" thinks the physics novice. User testing doesn't make sense to most developers. "You can just ask the users what they want, and that should be good enough!" thinks the psychology novice.

我推荐菲利普·津巴多主持的PBS系列纪录片《发现心理学》。如果做不到，那就找一本好的物理教科书。贵的那种。不是你在Borders书店里找到的低级小说自助废话，而是你只能在大学图书馆里找到的厚精装书。这是一个必要的基础。没有它，你也可以做出好的设计，但你只能凭直觉理解正在发生的事情。读一些好书会给你一个好的视角。