How To Make a GUI look nice

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Solution 1

The best advice I can give someone who has no UI design experience is this: make it look as much like all other programs as possible. Use the same colors, same fonts, same overall layout. Use a menubar with the appropriate items.

You might also want to take a look at the answers to the question Easily Digestible UI Tips for Developers

Solution 2

There are whole books written on this topic. You could search on Amazon for "user interface design" or similar terms, and find several hits. Alternatively, consult Microsoft's User Experience Guidelines, Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, or similar ones from open source desktop projects like GNOME and KDE.

The best rule of thumb is to make it boring—your app should look like everything else and try not to stand out. That makes it easier for people to figure out how to use your software.

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rossb83
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rossb83

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Updated on June 22, 2022

Comments

  • rossb83
    rossb83 almost 2 years

    I am currently designing a GUI to control some software. I am using fltk, but I could just as easily be using Qt or Windows Forms. I have all the controls I want, and it is fairly well organized, but it just looks bad. Are there any references or tips to making a GUI look nice?

  • Cody Gray
    Cody Gray almost 13 years
    +1 This is good advice even for people with UI design experience. Too often, designers who set out to build a better mousetrap fail horribly. Not necessarily because they failed to build a better mousetrap, but because the resulting interface is not intuitive to its target audience. People get used to the idiosyncracies of their platform. Your application may be revolutionary, but it's more likely to confuse them than it is to amaze them. Jef Raskin has struggled with this his whole life.