I gave a talk on “UI Fundamentals for Programmers” at WindyCityRails in Chicago last month. The talk covered modeling, breaking apps into screens, visual techniques, flows, and a few coding tips.
WindyCityRails was an excellent conference with top-notch organization and really friendly people. I highly recommend visiting Chicago and attending next year. Thanks to Ray and the folks at WindyCityRails for having me.
JF
on 29 Sep 09Really nicely done, Ryan. You’re at your best here.
Jamie, Baymard
on 29 Sep 09Uh, looking forward to watching this tomorrow morning over breakfast.
Golden combo: 37signals and home-made müsli..
Robert
on 29 Sep 09Thanks for sharing the video. Great information.
Matt Vague
on 30 Sep 09Great talk! Really useful stuff, but kinda hard to listen to cause the sound is crappy
Brad
on 30 Sep 09Awesome talk, thanks for sharing.
Kirkconnell
on 30 Sep 09Thanks for posting this video! It’s simply awesome.
BTW, in one of the questions you talked a little bit about fonts (verdana being better for small sizes), where can I find more tips like that regarding typography?
Ruben
on 30 Sep 09This is great stuff. I’ve read several UI design books so I didn’t expect to get much out of this but I was completely wrong. I got more out of this video in the short time it took for me to watch, than a lot of the material I’ve spent days reading.
Awesome stuff.
Anyone have any suggestions of other high quality videos or material like this?
Nate
on 30 Sep 09Ryan, I attended windycityrails specifically to see this talk, and I’m glad I did, you were awesome.
Very coincidentally, I spoke at a conference a few days later and heard another speaker Dr. Naomi Robbins who spoke about making better graphs.
One of her points was exactly like yours, about demphasizing stuff around data like gridlines. I think you would have liked her talk. Besides Tufte, she also is a disciple of William Cleveland and Stephen Few, who might have some stuff up your guys’ alley.
Richard Bird
on 30 Sep 09Genius, Ryan.
Jarod Luebbert
on 30 Sep 09This is a great talk. You had my attention the entire time. I’m going to show this to my HCI class.
Jose Espinal
on 30 Sep 09Great talk…Thanks!
Kevin Holesh
on 30 Sep 09I was impressed about how much you knew about Rails. It really shows how you as a designer, still have a rational and methodical mind. You’re thinking about “authoritative views” and too much abstraction.
The biggest thing I took away from that talk is that flows consist of three steps: 1) How do I get to the screen? 2) What do I do there? 3) What happens as a result?
That’s the perfect way to phrase it!
Daniel
on 30 Sep 09Excellent talk, Ryan! It’s funny (well, tragic) that I already know all the techniques, books and ways of working you recommend, yet you managed to communicate the principles so clearly and concisely that I realized I hadn’t actually been “walking the walk”. I sort of drifted back into bad old habits of design, telling myself that “this is a special case, so let me just set the principles aside and…”.
Having it all summed up so nicely has gotten me to refocus my efforts. I have already spotted several areas of improvement in my design (and few dead ends), and I’m finding much better solutions now.
Oh, and even though I knew it all already, I, like Jarod above, watched with complete attention anyway. Excellent talk!
ratchetcat
on 30 Sep 09Bravo, Ryan! That was a well organized talk and really conveyed a lot about how you approach design problems. Thanks so much for sharing your insights and process.
Darren Marshall
on 30 Sep 09Always love the insight and theories; what a difference it makes. Well done!
Darren Marshall
on 30 Sep 09Makes me wonder when your memoir is due to come out ;)
Martin
on 30 Sep 09For a moment there I thought I was looking at Andy Dick :)
Stewart
on 30 Sep 09Great. But, is there a non-flash version so the rest of us can view it?
Kevin Zolkiewicz
on 30 Sep 09Stewart, a Quicktime version is also available.
Olumuyiwa Ayandosu
on 30 Sep 09Great talk! Very insightful. The UI thought process before writing a line of code is what I love most about writing software. Thanks for sharing.
eyuzwa
on 30 Sep 09amazing talk, and really “talks” to me at my current point in my career / business! thanks so much (again) for what 37signals is giving back!
Dave Giunta
on 30 Sep 09Great presentation, Ryan. Thanks a bunch for giving it at Windy City Rails. I feel like designers and programmers are often more similar than they think they are, and talks like this confirm that feeling. Would you ever give a similar talk to an audience of designers to help them demystify some of the things you’ve learned on the programming side? Perhaps @zeldman would bring you on at An Event Apart?
limousine
on 30 Sep 09Thanks for sharing the video. Great information
Marc Grabanski
on 30 Sep 09Good talk on UI.
As far as form / input helpers.. check out CakePHP form helpers. Yes, they actually work and I’m a stickler about my HTML markup.
August Lilleaas
on 30 Sep 09Wow. Write a book about this, please!
Igor
on 30 Sep 09Great presentation Ryan, you conveyed a lot of very complex ideas in a very clear way. My favorite part was the explanation of Least Effective Difference. Cheers.
Brian Armstrong
on 30 Sep 09Awesome talk! I’ve been saying for years that programmers need to study this stuff more. It’s a shame they don’t teach more of this in CS classes. Hence, many programmer designed UI’s look like scaffolding.
Regarding your balsamic comments, I agree and design 100% of my stuff on paper. But there IS an important use for it: showing mockups to clients. It’s not as professional to send a hand drawn sketch to a client, so I know some firms who use it for this.
Thanks! Brian
Carlos Gustavo Xavier
on 30 Sep 09Nice approach also to give UI’s a design vs functionality approach. Good job. Concise.
Rama Vadakattu
on 30 Sep 09Talk is good.Sound quality is poor.
Adam Sentz
on 30 Sep 09Good stuff. Thanks.
Aleksandar
on 30 Sep 09Thanks for this, leaning more on the programming side, I’ll make sure to check out Tufte.
@Nate thanks for mentioning Few & Cleveland, interesting
Happy
on 01 Oct 09Great job Ryan. This is a welcome and refreshing change in view (pun intended) from the common designer opinion that they need not think about implementation. As you point out, the models and entities can provide a ubiquitous language for discussion items at a concrete level. I’m stoked to go design now! Thanks for sharing your experience. As much as your products, it’s talks like this that have earned 37signals my respect.
killian
on 01 Oct 09Your ideas intrigue me, I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.
(In all seriousness: Thanks, I really appreciate the insight and I learned a ton here!)
Corey S
on 01 Oct 09Glad to see I’m not as archaic as I thought I was by avoiding UI modeling apps. Why duplicate the effort, indeed.
Igwe
on 02 Oct 09great presentation. I had so many eye openers while watching this.
This discussion is closed.