I personally think that user interface is the most important part in any software. You can have the best functionality on the market, but if the UI in your product sucks then no one will buy it. Who needs software that is impossible to use?
In Stuffed Guys, we have a 2-tier process of creating user interface.
The first version of the interface is created during initial product development. It is done only by us; professional designer is not involved. The first version evolves a lot during the time when the product is developed. We constantly test it on ourselves as the first users of the product and make improvements where we can.
At the end of the product development we usually have an overall good UI, that as we think is easy to use and it usually looks good too. But we realize that since we were involved in the development of the product and know everything it does and how it does it we probably don’t see things that are still inconvenient for a new user.
So then we handle functionally finished product to the professional designer. One of the best advantages for us is that this designer is completely new to the product, he hasn’t used it yet. Based on his fresh look on how things work and should work, he creates an improved user interface, adding all required eye-candy to it in the process as well.
With Stuffed Tracker, we are currently at the last stages of the second tier described above. Professional designer is almost finished with his version of the UI and we are currently implementing it in html. Now, since the new version of Stuffed Tracker is build on our own Nova System framework that supports skins, we decided to keep both versions of the interface as two different skins both of which would be available in the final product.
1st version
2nd version
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