Nathan Barry – Designing Web Applications

It’s not that you set out to create a poorly designed product, but lots of mistakes—big or small—along the way left you with an interface that does its job, but is painful to use.

So what now? Hire a designer to fix it for you?

I think you can learn to fix it yourself. Undo those mistakes one at a time to create an experience that your customers won’t notice. Wait… what? Yes, I said an experience they won’t notice. Frustration and confusion get noticed. Completing a task quickly and easily doesn’t.

Great experiences feel effortless. Designs are clear, buttons are easy to find. The process will go so smoothly that the customers won’t think anything of it.

That’s good.

That means your customers are using your application to get work done without feeling confused and frustrated. That’s the kind of product they can recommend to friends and co-workers.

Sound good to you? Let’s jump in and cover what you’ll learn in Designing Web Applications.

Designing Web software is different than designing websites
If you approach both the same way your software will be painful to use.

Design for repeat use
A website is visited once or twice by a single user, and maybe more often if it has frequently updated content. A web application, on the other hand, can be visited dozens of times per day, meaning you need to focus on designing for efficiency.
Complex Interactions
Often web applications have complex interactions that need to be simplified for the user. This is not normally a problem on marketing websites, where the main interactions are simply reading or watching content.
Task completion
Business software is only used because it helps people complete tasks. They have a job to do and they want to get in and get out. It is critical that you design for these different flows to make your user’s job as easy as possible.

Designing an Application Flow
The quickest possible route.
Learn not only how to optimize for the
fewest clicks, but also for a mental model
that is quick to understand.
Learn to Follow a Design Process
Take an idea from rough sketches to a polished interface.
When designing a web application, it is critical that you focus on
user experience before you start styling the application.
Download a Sample
Get a better idea of what is included with the book.
The sample sections are from different parts of the book covering everything from how to handle autosaving to working with lighting in your interface.
Learn from the experts
Watch video interviews on design, development, and marketing.
The interviews included with the book cover everything from Ryan Singer of Basecamp teaching wireframing and user experience design to Patrick Mackenzie of Kalzumeus sharing the software marketing tactics that have made his clients millions of dollars.
Learn how Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, designed the best payment experience on the web. These are just a small sample of the great content included in the 7 video interviews. All the interviews include a transcript as well.

About the author
Nathan Barry
Nathan has been designing software with Photoshop for 8 years. In that time he’s suffered through hundreds of tutorials designed to teach photography—not interface design. Because of that frustrating learning experience he is determined to teach software professionals exactly what they need to know to design great software.
Nathan is the author of Designing Web Applications, The App Design Handbook, and Authority. He also founded the email marketing company ConvertKit.

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