November 13, 2003

UI Design for Web Apps

Jean Tillman has written a nice overview of some of the issues facing designers when working on web applications: User Interface Design for Web Applications: It’s a Different World from Web Site Design.

This article could be also be titled “Things I Wish I'd Known Before Designing My Latest Web-Based Application.” You see, I had experience designing Web sites. I’d mastered the art of creating catchy content. I worked with Web-savvy graphic artists who provided masterful images. I knew the latest HTML coding tricks and could design around the various browser quirks and incompatibilities. Armed with these skills and experiences, I volunteered to design the user interface for one of my company’s Web-based applications—and dove right in.

Its nice to see some attention paid to this area of web design. I think that creating web applications that look and work well is a huge challenge, and I'd love to see more articles in this vein.