UI critique and craft

A screencast from the Refactoring UI series by Steve Schoger, who takes a weak page design and improves it step by step. He shows practical changes to spacing, hierarchy and styling that make an interface look better.

Steve Schoger, co-author of Refactoring UI, walks through redesigning a checkout page for the WP Pusher product. He improves it step by step through hierarchy, spacing, colour and other visual details.

Steve Schoger of Refactoring UI shows a redesign of an interface called Resolute, working through the changes that improve it step by step. It teaches practical visual UI fixes through a before and after example.

Chainlift, the creator behind the LiftKit UI project, explains how spacing works in interface design and shows examples of consistent versus off spacing. It covers why spacing scales and proportion make layouts look right.

A short talk by Will Dayble of Squareweave on designing as if the user is drunk, meaning they have the attention and vision of a drunk person. The aim is interfaces that stay clear, simple and forgiving when users are distracted or impaired.

Composer and designer Tantacrul, who later led design for MuseScore, takes apart the user interface of Avid's Sibelius music notation software. He walks through specific screens and workflows to show where it breaks basic UI and UX principles.

Tantacrul (Martin Keary) critiques the interface and user experience of the MuseScore notation software in a long, humorous video. He walks through concrete usability problems, from menus to workflow, and what a better design would do instead.

Tantacrul (Martin Keary) critiques the interface design of Steinberg's Dorico music notation software, including first-time user testing. It is part of his series of music software UX reviews that also covers Sibelius and MuseScore.

Martin Keary, who makes the Tantacrul channel, reviews the interface design of Propellerhead's Reason, a music production program. It is part of his series of critical UX breakdowns of music and notation software, going through workflow, layout and usability problems.

A roughly 20-minute narrated critique of the Windows 8 user interface and user experience. It goes through usability problems such as unclear clickable elements, illogical organization, and the clash of a tablet-style interface on desktop PCs.

Chris Pirillo watches non-technical users try the Windows 8 preview, including an older relative commenters call the dad test. It shows them struggling with the new start screen and the missing start button.

A comedic Your Product Sucks review of Apple's Apple Music app on macOS, picking apart its interface and usability problems. It is a critique in the style of a mock-professional product review.

Tom Lum critiques the usability of Apple's Podcasts app, going through the interface problems that make it hard to use.

Ross Scott of Accursed Farms argues, as a non-expert user, that graphical user interfaces have got worse and could be much better. He compares modern GUIs with older Windows ones, covers customization, and ends with a list of features a good GUI should have. It runs well over an hour.

Vaclav Krejci shows that the flat look of Apple's iOS 7 interface can be reproduced almost entirely with shapes and effects in Microsoft Word. The video is a short demo, with the .docx file offered for download.

Rasmus Andersson, a designer at Figma and creator of the Inter typeface, gives a Config 2023 talk on the overlooked details of user interfaces. It includes a segment on text cursors and other small interface behaviors that turn out to be surprisingly hard to get right.

The first of ten parts of the MIX08 talk on the story of the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon, from the Office user interface team. It tells how the team studied how people used Office and redesigned its interface around that.

Alex Faaborg, a Mozilla designer, explains the reasoning behind putting tabs above the address bar in Firefox 4. He lays out the interface logic for why tabs belong at the top of the window.

Phoebe Yu explains why Chinese app design looks crowded and strange to Western eyes and why it works for its users. It looks at how culture shapes interface preferences.

Tantacrul (Martin Keary), who led the redesign of the free notation app MuseScore, explains how MuseScore 4 was made. He covers why music software is hard to design, including notation engraving and the limits of MIDI.