Geek Site of the Week

IndieHIG

December 3, 2006

"The IndieHIG Wiki is a place where developers and UI designers can come together to create a new set of Human Interface Guidelines to supplement Apples guidelines.”

The wiki is where the work to define tasteful use of UI elements is being done but I must warn you it’s very young and has very little content.  Still, this is a noble cause and improving 3rd party UI design will benefit users by giving us more ergonomics and consistency.

Thanks to Nick for recommending it.

Yes, I’m very interested in (G)UI.  Mac pundits and third-party developers have long known the Mac interface has quirks and inconsistencies. Casual users are beginning to see them too. Meanwhile, these same users justifiably praise the general high quality of Apple’s software, even with its inconsistencies. The IndieHIG addresses the trouble third-party developers have in accessing and incorporating into their software the newest and most-modern UI elements that Apple uses in their Next Big Thing because Apple has not shared them yet.  Thus the developers are trying to unite and replicate Apple’s UI elements as a group and decide on which particular version of these new elements is the best and agree to use that version. 

If I may rant for a moment: for many years Apple has published a rulebook, The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, for user interface design. These days Apple is known to not completely follow these guidelines (and that’s their choice). This non-compliance leads leads to new experiments in UI design, but such seemingly random changes upset the consistency and expectations of those who learned and actually invested in following the now out-of-fashion UI elements. The UI is constantly evolving, particularly through new OS X updates such as the upcoming Leopard. However, Apple has not provided a route to switch back to older UI styles, though there are products for popular apps like Safari that can, for example, make the UI more Aqua-like or take on a different metal style.  Clearly Apple could technically enable users to switch these UI styles and elements but has chosen to instead enforce a rigid one-size-fits-all approach that actually ignores user preferences for consistency. Now at IndieHIG, any developer can contribute by updating the Apple Human Interface Guidelines through the power of a shared community wiki, an information organization system that has been successful, as I wrote about before.  At the least, if you are not going to (be allowed to) go “backwards” into the old Aqua or less metallic looks, this new project will help you have consistency with the new ones.

It might be pleasing to see a unified interface beyond the iApps. This should be pursued because I think most developers want to match Apple’s most up-to-date styles and also do it easily by working with other developers, or even already having all the work done on some aspects.  Relatedly, I still must stress how I want to be able to switch skins, a desire WindowBlinds on Windows was good at fulfilling. While similar programs on the Mac exist, I gave up on the process because it sometimes cost money and lead to instability, or the skins were incomplete.  Anyway, the UI for a modern OS has many, many elements (beyond the minimize or maximize buttons) and updating the Human Interface Guidelines will be a big project, but the foundation to succeed at this effort is now. It does not necessarily go against Apple’s design choices but is more-so catch up.

The problem is real.  Apple simply doesn’t provide their most recent UI library at a fast enough pace for fellow developers to release similar-looking software, which goes beyond profit and affects usability and ergonomics.  Apple knows the third-party developers exist, of course (think WWDC), yet it keeps distance from them as far as the Human Interface Guidelines and related libraries go, making them lag behind at the cost of usability and consistency.

So hopefully third-party developers will now be able to match Apple’s UI looks more accurately and future updates to freeware, shareware, and commercial software will be more similar to Apple’s newest designs but with less thanks to Apple and more about standardized reverse-engineering by a wide range of developers.