This meditation reports the interface and API design references I've found useful and further presents some general interface design ideas and checklists in the hope that they may prove useful -- and that they might be improved upon by your insightful feedback.

For me the two greatest tools for interface/API design I've come across are Test Driven Development and Refactoring. Growing effective interfaces/APIs over time, rather than designing them all up front, is a stupidly useful technique.

API Design Checklist

Alan Shalloway and Ron Jeffries' list of features for a simple design is one that resonates for me:

  1. Runs all the tests.
  2. Contains no duplication.
  3. Expresses all the ideas you want to express.
  4. Minimizes classes and methods.
The three greatest experts in the human side of interface design that I'm aware of are: Donald Norman, Jakob Nielsen, Larry Wall

I know lots of people who would argue with Nielsen's place on that list - especially with the absence of Alan Cooper!

While Larry is a hugely talented programming language designer (in my opinion anyway :-) I'm not entirely convinced that this necessarily maps onto "human" interface design in general.

In reply to Re: On Interfaces and APIs by adrianh
in thread On Interfaces and APIs by eyepopslikeamosquito

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.