我认为部分原因是UI设计和程序设计的目标经常相互冲突。当我编程的时候，我经常会想“最简单的方法是什么?”在设计UI时，最简单的方法并不总是最友好的。如果你两者都做，你可能会倾向于选择最简单的实现，这对用户友好性有负面影响。

我还认为程序员太接近产品，无法从用户的角度来看待它。对编程人员来说非常容易和直观的东西对用户来说可能并不容易。获得用户的输入是必要的。

UI设计也不是总是正确或错误的。不同的人对UI的评价不同。例如，有些人讨厌Office中的新“Ribbon”UI，有些人喜欢它。有些人认为苹果的OSX UI很棒，有些人不喜欢它，觉得它很难使用。不管你设计出什么样的UI，总会有人不喜欢它。

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。

“我们能做些什么来重新训练我们的大脑，让它更有效地设计出令人愉悦、有用的展示层吗?”

是的——使用接口驱动的架构。首先根据业务需求设计用户流程——然后根据用户流程设计编程逻辑和数据库。如果你将中间层和后端设计成服务前端的结构，那么你将拥有一个以用户为中心的应用程序。

为什么UI设计对某些开发者来说如此困难?

这有点像问为什么篮球对足球运动员来说很难。

UI设计和软件开发需要大脑的两个半球。这并不是说设计师在开发方面很糟糕，反之亦然，只是他们试图用错误的大脑来做。任何严肃的人都不会反对。

因为他们通常不是UI设计师。这是一种不同的技能。这是它。