UI Design Knowledge

Gannon

I'm looking to broaden my horizon on the subject and I was wondering if anyone knew any cool resources they'd be willing to share. So far I've found

http://www.thewanderlust.net/blog/

http://www.slideshare.net/unthank/game-design-2-lecture-5-game-ui-wireframes-and-paper-prototypes

http://devmag.org.za/2011/02/02/video-game-user-interface-design-diegesis-theory/

and

http://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/level-17-user-interfaces/

These were just some great places I've found on theories, practices etc for when working on UI. I'm looking for even more though. Any tools like scaleform. tutorials, more forums. Anything really. My brain hungers for more knowledge

ScribbleHead

Some theory here too http://www.interaction-design.org/

Behance for inspiration

Kwramm

Sean Ahern's GDC talk was pretty good - although it's mostly aimed at UI design for tools. Then again, even as tech artist I think too many plugins and scripts have terrible UIs.

Jedi

The biggest thing is you should remove choice where choice isn't necessary. When I see a ui with options where there shouldn't be options I want to throw up.

Ben Apuna

This is a great course on UI UX design sign up and watch the videos: https://www.coursera.org/course/hci

Some sites & articles:

http://www.lukew.com/

http://cargocollective.com/jayse

http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2012/06/01/the-craft-of-screen-graphics-and-movie-user-interfaces-conversation-with-jayse-hansen.html

http://www.awwwards.com/creative-ui-design-examples-for-great-ux.html

EDIT more:

http://www.antonw.com/

http://www.encide.com/interfaces/2012/

http://work.gmunk.com/

JamesWild

@Kwramm on tools specifically

I'm quite baffled whenever I see a bizarre custom UI like Max or xNormal. You could have done this using native widgets in a quarter of the time, and in being vaguely consistent with its surrounding operating system, it'd look a lot better...

Most worrying is that a lot of Microsoft's own software violates this, particularly Skype (not originally Microsoft, but they've owned it long enough) and Office. (Which uses its own different visually implementations of standard Windows controls since 2003. Why.)

Also, applications that use proper widgets are automatically drawn with newer widgets when you update your OS.

I'm of the opinion that the less work you have to do to make a UI, the less work it'll take for the users to comprehend it.

Also: don't include useless fluff, it will only confuse users. My tools don't need a RAM meter, CPU meter, sounds, and a blinking light that tells me the program hasn't hung. If I want resource monitoring, I'll open Resource Monitor.

Mitchell Banks

Gannon, I had a similar inquiry.

Check this out (a very detailed response from imyj!)
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1662123&postcount=13

Gannon

Thanks guys,

@ Mitchell banks - This is kick ass, I searched UI and got just about every post imaginable that had the letters U and I together. The wiki page was a big help too.

Sorry I didn't have to to respond sooner, Wedding all day yesterday and Disney today. I'll start on some stuff and begin posting in PnP probably some time this week. I'll do my best to keep things in Mind. I'm planning on seeing about getting something going in UDK to start.

RAL

Hey Gannon, not sure if you've seen this before but the UDN has a pretty huge section when it comes to Scaleform. Lots of links, resources and documentation in here.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Scaleform.html