The title of this post might sound like a pun but, ironically enough, the interface design of interface design tools frequently does not comply with usability conventions. I would like to point out a couple of rules that a good user interface design tool should fulfill.

One of the most important rules is the rule of three clicks. I don’t know who invented this rule originally but this definitely applies to interface design tools. If a user can’t find the needed functionality or information within 3 clicks then he or she will be annoyed with this interface design tool at best. I have tried a number of interface design tools, and I have to say that this obvious rule is sometimes neglected.  Users have to search for information in all sorts of secret places. To my mind, all the functions, design elements and information that a prototype cannot be built without, should be displayed within one click from the working screen of the interface design tool.

Another thing worth mentioning is the learnability of user interface design tools. The majority of people who use interface design tools are experienced in web design or web development, which is why interface design tools often have complex and technical interfaces. But some of the users of interface design tools are people who have no specific knowledge of software or web design. I think that interface design tools should take these users into account as well by making software more intuitive and easy to learn. Fast learnability of interface design tools would improve their overall usability and increase their use by non-professionals.

Fortunately, there are some interface design tools that do a very good job at providing easy-to-use user interfaces for a broad audience. That makes them great candidates for user interface design tools to choose for your next project.

There is no self-respecting PC manufacturer out there today that doesn’t boast at least one tablet among its inventory, or in the very least hasn’t announced plans to release one. Lenovo has just released the Android-running ThinkPad Tablet to complement it’s ThinkPad range of business-centric laptops. The product design of the tablet maintains the same look of the laptops although it isn’t as thin and light as, say, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the iPad 2. Uniquely the tab comes with a stylus pen ready to jot down notes, make annotations, or simply to sketch out ideas. In terms of user interface design the ThinkPad Tablet adds a couple UI design flourishes of its own onto that of Android Honeycomb. The most obvious is the user interface design of the homescreen, which features a Launcher widget in the middle with shortcuts to ‘Watch’, ‘Email’, ‘Listen’, ‘Read’, and a globe at the core which links to the web browser. This gives users, new ones particularly, quick access to arguably the most used functions on a tablet apart from video games.

What are some other user interface design flourishes of the Thinkpad Tablet?

Another user interface design novelty with regards to Android is the App Wheel. This can be activated by clicking on the icon at the center of the bar at the bottom of the homescreen’s user interface design. Doing this brings about a carousel-like wheel of a user’s favorite apps to the right of the user interface design. Other than that the user interface design is largely unchanged from Honeycomb, unlike the completely new user interface designs of the Amazon Kindle Fire or the GridOS. Arguably the most appealing part of the Thinkpad Tablet is that it comes pre-loaded with all manner of apps that makes this tablet a better all-rounder out-of-the-box than even the iPad. However there are a number of usability issues, such as poor AVI video playback, which hold it back from being an all out hit. Business users will be more than satisfied with the built-in apps, stylus and the extra ports.

“Mirror mirror on the wall which is the coolest user interface design of them all?” If the mirror I am referring to was paired with some speakers it could very well reply “verily the coolest user interface design in the land is mine”! What was once a magical concept from children’s stories could very well be coming to a bathroom near you. Thanks to the New York Times’ Research & Development group mirrors are the latest screen to join the user interface design bonanza. Technophobes might be quick to remark that in an ever more connected and faster moving world not even the venerable bathroom is safe. Now the time spent in the bathroom can be spent multitasking by, for example, brushing your teeth while reading emails etc. The mirror uses the Microsoft Kinect peripheral to detect the user and receive voice instructions.

The mirror also packs an RFID reader to recognize tagged pharmaceutical products and more for information. Naturally the prototype has been shown browsing through New York Times articles and video content. The user interface design of the mirror is reminiscent of augmented reality apps only that the information is overlaid on the mirror’s reflection rather than through a camera. One of the videos showcasing the product featured a user flipping through ties from his wardrobe. The only drawback I saw with this is whether people spend long enough in front of mirrors to justify reading an article, for example. However as part of an ecosystem it could prove invaluable. One could start surfing while brushing one’s teeth, to then pick up where one left off on a screen on one’s fridge, car, smartphone, office computer etc… Now that mirrors are resembling magical myths of ages gone by the question remains which is the next screen to join the user interface design bandwagon.

This is the first part of my two-part blog post on the frontiers of natural user interface design.

Natural User Interfaces represent the third and latest paradigm in user interface design. The first user interface design was the use of Command Line Interfaces exemplified by operating systems such as MS-DOS. These eventually gave way to Graphical User Interfaces introduced by the first Macintosh and, later, by Windows. The user interface design of GUIs use visual metaphors to convey meaning such as a trash can icon to signify the recycle bin folder. Natural User Interfaces expand on GUIs by seeking to become invisible with successive learned interactions that are intended to feel as natural as possible. Natural User Interface design takes place on a number of frontiers.

Using Touch/ Gestures to Control a User Interface Design

Using gestures on a touchscreen is perhaps the most advanced form of natural user interfaces. Smartphones and tablets have made brisk business with their intuitive user interface designs that are so natural there are countless videos on YouTube of toddlers learning to use them before they even learn to speak properly! This would be impossible with Command Line Interfaces. The iPhone is undoubtedly the poster boy for using touch to control a user interface design. Swiping and pinch-to-zoom  have become so commonplace that Apple has even patented some of these interactions to secure a monopoly. Multi-touch gestures are also now jumping to the desktop as the latest Mac OS X implements iOS gestures

Using Audio to Control a User Interface Design

The idea of audio as a frontier of Natural User Interface design is not new. For accessibility reasons voice control has been implemented in several user interfaces. The Dragon speech recognition software package is built on this very premise. However audio also brings a number of challenges with it. Audio is still better processed by the human brain than by computers, though at the rate technology is growing we might not be too far off from the day when one could simply talk to a computer like one would to another person.