Some interesting insights from Joel Spolsky regarding user interface design. This addresses the common design issue of product which emphasizes too much on technical details rather than usability. Usability refers to how efficient and easy a product that can be used by a user to solve problem, not necessarily stunning visual effects or rocket science features. Google products such as Google Search, Gmail and Gtalk are great examples of high usability: Light-weight, simple, clean, easy to use yet problem solving.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000057.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000058.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000059.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000060.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000061.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000063.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000064.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000065.html


Joel Spolsky:

When you design user interfaces, it's a good idea to keep two principles in mind:

1.. Users don't have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn't read it.
2.. In fact, users can't read anything, and if they could, they wouldn't want to.

Good thread, most ASM programmers tend to avoid GUI because it's time consuming and there's no algorithms to optimize. But GUI design is very important when creating software for OTHERs to use.

The tendency to over simplify GUIs just to get them done and functional isn't always a bad thing. I simple dialog with buttons for every program action is pretty straight forward and easy to use when you compare it to a tree of confusing menus to navigate. The buttons are simpler/ more efficient to use but you sacrifice screen realistate.

Customization:
I think as broadband and always on connections become more common, application customization will also resurface. If you develope software with registration (serial/key etc) why not allow the user to save their customization settings on your server. When they jump onto another computer with that software they simply type their email and password, and those saved settings are initialized for them.

This is present (and i think more so in the future) with web 2.0 applications using AJAX and DB.

3D GUIs:
I don't if an intuitive and efficient way to use 3D in a GUI will come about, but their a few benefits to graphics accelerated GUIs that are present now. Transparency in windows and toolbards is great especially in a program with a lot of need options. Also being able to embed video; if a user needs help with an option they just right click and hit help and a video tutorial for it runs right in the main window.

MOV rax,Long[RANT]
RET 0