What Interface?

The best interface is not just beautiful. It is not only elegant and usable and innovative. The best interface is invisible.

The ultimate interface is integrated, or subsumed, or invisible. It is designed away. The user interface is a direct path between the users and what they want to do with your product. That should be your goal.

Build as minimal an interface as possible to suit your users. Put the beauty, usefulness, and usability into the actual data experience.

Let Data Scream

People want data: pictures, graphics, drawings, visualizations, words, numbers, and sounds—they are all data. The reason people use software is to get the data they want, in the right way, with as little delay or distraction as possible.

Your mission is to understand the data, be the data, and figure out how to make that data not just be, but to scream.

Know Thy Code

An industrial designer who isn't deeply knowledgeable about metals and polymers is currently unemployed.

To be a great designer, you must have intimate knowledge of your construction materials. If you want to design software interfaces, you've gotta know a lot about the code.

Prototype Like Crazy

It is impossible to evaluate design ideas properly without a prototype that approximately conveys the final functional form factor.

For industrial designers, that means creating objects with the correct form factor using materials as close as possible to the final envisioned product.

In software, that means creating with code. Code early, code often, and test and evaluate through a working prototype. There is no better way.

Design Axioms

• Let Data Scream
• Reality Bites
• Prototype Like Crazy
• Pixel Perfect
• Bitch! Loud and Often
• Eat Your Own Dog Food
• Stop Seeking Others' Approval
• Date Your Users
• Grid It
• Type Less and Less Type
• Color Carefully
• Know Thy Code
• Lust to Dust
• What Interface?
• Repeat Customers Rock
• Deja Vu All Over Again
• Get Physical