by Aaron

Do you create your own User Interfaces?

If you’re creating an application with a user interface, what tools do you use — and when do you use them?

There’s different stages in design — from conception to implementation.

There’s some discussion around a 37signals post a few days ago. The discussion was about how they don’t use Photoshop as part of the design process. I can see it working well for them.

image

Their user interfaces are plain and simple. Not hard to mock up quickly using any basic editors.

Robby suggested that it’s the opposite of his experience (generally). By using Photoshop (or similar)…

I also end up pushing things further (visually or even at the interaction level) because the tool gets me there quicker.

I totally agree — if 37signals had richer designs and user interface requirements, I bet they’d finding themselves using some other tools to create their user interfaces. (and they recently had a job posting advertising the need for a killer designer with virtual free reign … I bet they don’t stick to a syntax highlight text editor …. :) ).

Personally, I use a wide mix of tools — whatever seems right and wouldn’t want to set artificial boundaries.

I try to start out with some sketches on paper or a whiteboard.

The next step depends a lot on the scale and challenges of the specific project. If I really want to concentrate on the user interface and the overall experience, I’ll use a tool like Photoshop or Illustrator. It allows me to make quick changes to the user interface without a lot of fuss (and create lots of different versions). If I have a bit more time, and a prototype implementation would be reasonable, I’ll often break out a development tool and mock it up and experiment. For less important projects, I’ll proceed directly to end game and work on the final user interface directly in the actual project (if I’m able to do that).

There’s definitely no right answer for everyone. It makes sense to use the right tool for the job. However, I’m sure some of my readers work with companies or on jobs where there are rules in place regarding the tools, steps, etc. If you’d care to summarize and share, I’d love to hear them!