Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows

by Everett N. McKay

Create better user interfaces by designing from the outside in. How important is user interface design? A poorly executed interface can frustrate users - and cost your organization time and money - while an effective design can improve productivity by helping users get their work done. So what makes good interfaces good and bad interfaces bad? Which design choices can improve the user's experience with a program? Emphasizing practical results over theory, this concise, Windows-focused handbook distills industry best practices and the author's 25 years of software development expertise into straightforward and effective methods you can apply right now to create more usable user-driven software. Coverage Basic concepts of user interface (UI) design - knowing the standards; establishing consistency Practical development techniques - specific ways to improve the UI for applications built with the Win32 API or MFC Understanding the user experience - putting the goals of the user ahead of yours; focusing your creativity the "right" way Windows user interface components - mastering the fundamentals; making appropriate choices Testing and evaluation - ensuring software quality and usability

Genres: Programming

612 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Everett McKay is Principal of UX Design Edge and a UX design trainer and consultant with global clientele. Everett’s specialty is finding practical, intuitive, simple, highly usable solutions quickly for web, mobile, and desktop applications. Everett has over 30 years’ experience in user interface design and has delivered UX design workshops to an international audience that includes Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa.

Everett is author of "Intuitive Design: Eight Steps to an Intuitive Design", the definitive guide to designing intuitive interactions, and "UI Is Communication: How to Design Intuitive, User Centered Interfaces by Focusing on Effective Communication", a groundbreaking approach to UI design using human communication-based principles and techniques. While at Microsoft, Everett wrote the Windows UX Guidelines for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Everett holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from MIT.