week 4: about face

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 starts by asking the question “what makes a design solution good?” and states the answer lies in the principles, values, and patterns of design. Design values are tied into the ethics behind a design, serving as a motive for principles and practices of design. Products should do no harm to the user, avoiding interpersonal, psychological, physical, economic, social/societal, and environmental harm. Design principles address issues of behavior, form, and content, encouraging the creation of product behaviors that support the needs and goals of users. Design patterns capture useful design solutions and generalize them to address similar problems. They reduce design time and improve the quality of design solutions. This chapter brings up the ethics of design and how it impacts others aspects of an interface.

Chapter 9

This chapter focuses on the platform and posture that must be considered when designing an interface. Postures are how a product presents itself to the user while platforms are a combination of hardware and software that allows the product to function. There are three postures for a desktop design known as sovereign, transient, and daemonic, each with a different set of behavioral attributes. Sovereign posture applications are ideal for long term attention from a user. They’re kept up and running continuously and occupy the full screen. Transient posture is for more short term functions, coming and going when needed and performs a single function with related controls. Users aren’t as familiar with this kind of posture as its presence is temporary, meaning its interface should be simple and helpful. Daemonic posture describes an interface the user does not interact with, performing tasks in the background without human interaction. Websites also have postures, grouped into three categories. Informational, transactional, and web applications. This chapter emphasizes whether to use sovereign or transient postures based on what you’re designing and for whom. 

Chapter 18

Chapter 18 focuses on desktop design, providing mass amounts of information on what goes into creating a desktop interface. Desktops consist of a primary and secondary window. The primary window contains the application’s contents while the secondary window provides supporting content of the primary window. Usually called dialogs, this content is described as less frequently used properties and functions of the primary window. Primary windows contain the content/work area, the menu bar, and the tool bar. Content panes, index panes, tool palettes, and sidebars can be found here as well. This chapter mentions and addresses all types of windows and content that can be found in the desktop, proving to be a very informative guide for the creation of desktop based applications.