Interface Design

User Interface Design Software is used to construct the content that the user of the software sees when interacting with a piece of software. Virtually all software and websites today are built using some sort of user interface tools.

Although there are numerous ways of making interfaces, on this site we have focused on Open Source tools because they are freely available to anyone and often times more advanced than commercial solutions.

The goal of a successful user interface design is to make a user's interaction as efficient and simple as possible while accomplishing all of the user goals. This is commonly known as user-centered design. Graphic design is commonly used in building interfaces in order to provide a specific look and feel, but it must accomplish that without compromising usability.

There are several phases in user interface design:

Functionality Requirements Gathering
User Analysis
Information architecture
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Graphic Interface Design

A good understanding of user needs is essential in building successful interface designs.

Click here to see some open source interface design tools.

References on this page:

"Creating user interfaces using programming by example, visual programming, and constraints". ACM. 1990-04-11. Retrieved 2009-12-01.
"Past, present, and future of user interface software tools". ACM. 2000-03-01. Retrieved 2009-12-01.