"The remote control is the perfect example of how complicated things have gotten within the consumer electronics industry. Most people probably have well over one hundred – more or less indecipherable - buttons on the remotes that they use every day for their TV, DVD, set-top box, stereo and so on. All they want to do is watch a movie or listen to some music, but sometimes it feels like you need a PhD to put it on."

I like the thinking. And the remote looks damn slick - not sure how well it'll stand when people start accidentally sitting on them, but what the hell, if you can afford one, you can replace it.

"We hear that the Mozilla Foundation is buying hiring three of the principle folks from Humanized, a small software user-interface shop in Chicago founded by Aza Raskin, the son of famous Apple interface designer Jef Raskin. Humanized has been working on improving the UI of both desktop and Web-based software, with projects like Enso and music search engine Songza."

If only more open-source initiatives would take Mozilla's lead and invest more into user-interface design...sighs.

"Sometime this year when AIR becomes truly cross platform (Mac, Windows, and Linux) it's going to open up a whole new world to designers: Linux... But there's a problem, Linux applications are damn ugly. They have this kind of semi Windows 95 feel to them that gives some geek cred but isn't at all pleasing to the eye. Take a look at the Rhythmbox Music Player (the design of the site is a perfect representation) that is default player for MP3s. That's developer art at its finest."

Thank god someone agrees with me publicly. Of course, he got attacked for saying it though - what else did you expect?

"With computers as common a household appliance as televisions now, who might be using your web-application has expanded beyond the realm of just the power user. Complicated menu systems, alert dialog messages that lock you out of the browser and flashy but confusing layouts aren’t necessarily going to help you make conversions. The Web user demographic has changed and to make your web application appeal to the masses your user interface needs to teach and to guide."

Nice article on the role of web user interfaces - some food for thought.

"Designing an account registration and sign-in process that doesn't frustrate users turns out to be very difficult to achieve. It looks easy at the outset, but a pile of subtleties can sneak up on your experience, making something that should be simple become stressful for the users... Here are 8 common design mistakes we often see as we watch users try to create accounts and sign into the site."

Nice list, good explanations. Don't agree with all of them - some can be security risks, but more sites should put this much consideration into signin systems.

"Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been driving the design of a cross platform shape and control set for Firefox 3... Our goals are to design an interface that is simple, modern, and visually lighter than previous versions of Firefox. A lot of careful thought went into determining which controls we could integrate or remove. We also focused a lot on how we could leverage visual design (namely grouping and patterns) to form a user interface that is both simpler and easier to use."

Very interesting, not only for Firefox, but also the design/branding process they went through and reasons behind it.

"If you work at a big company and you’ve ever had to do something that should be simple, like file an expense report, make changes to your salary withholdings — or, heck, if you’ve ever tried to apply for a job at a big company — then you’ve probably encountered these confounding user experiences. And you probably cursed out loud."

Good post, both the 37signals one and the linked one. Doesn't end at enterprises either, as commenters have pointed out - WebCT is bloody horrible! A one-click button to see all the new discussion messages completely out of the thread context? WTF!

"Google released their underwhelming-yet-much-anticipated PowerPoint killer today, Presently. I checked it out but it doesn’t hold a candle to SlideRocket (ZDNet Gallery), a presentation application built by Mitch Grasso using Flex and Amazon’s S3. One of the reasons that I like SlideRocket is because it not only has a great interface but it also allows you to create very rich presentations."

Looks a heap more impressive than Google's Presently. Love the nice UI, and the Keynote-like transitions. In fact, when available on AIR, this may actually drag me away from PowerPoint...

"As religious as I am about the Ribbon and contextual interface, I suffer just as much knowing a feature exists somewhere in the application that I just can’t find in the Ribbon...You basically type the command you are thinking of, and you’ll be presented a list of matching command buttons. And unlike commands in the Ribbon which are only a select few picked by someone else who thought might be relevant, this search goes deep into the application to find anything and everything."

Pretty cool plugin, especially for those who buy into the search and keyboard way of doing things, that seems to be proliferating software and the web now.