吃自己的狗粮实际上并不是最好的方式。缺乏对用户关注的关注，虽然这是事实，但也不是故事的全部。同样，随着您的专业知识的增长，您也会逐渐远离正常的用户关注点。我认识的大多数开发人员都想在开发解决问题的软件方面做得很好。

这种脱节发生在想象力的失败。我们人类没有能力思考所有的可能性和组合。当然，我们试图用“更好的”方法来克服这个问题。

我发现唯一有效的方法就是让自己置身于接收用户反馈的火线上。通过这种方式，我了解到我正在解决的问题，不仅仅是一次，而是在用户使用我的软件的过程中持续不断地进行。

这不是一个简单的解决方案。你不仅要成为一名优秀的程序员，还要擅长X，因为X是你试图解决的任何问题。通过擅长X，你可以获得必要的经验来理解可能性和局限性。你可以开始在你的代码中考虑到这一点，从而在你提供的功能和UI设计中产生更精致的软件。

这不是重新训练你的大脑，而是获得有效解决问题所需的经验。如果你要做的是像Stack Overflow这样的全新游戏，你就必须负责用户反馈才能获得游戏体验。

部分原因在于，UI设计比看起来要难得多，就像编程比设计师看起来要难得多一样。这两个人对完全不同的事情的担忧程度大不相同，而这一点，除了所需的方法和技能明显不同之外，导致他们关注彼此看不见的问题。

I've found that it helps to describe my app and how to use it to someone without any visual tools whatsoever. It helps focus on what is actually necessary and important and feeds back what can be comprehended quickly by another person. I can do this even before I have a line of code, so it's very cheap to do and doesn't require any artistic skills. The other advantage is that verbalizing the app gets parts of my brain working that otherwise would remain dormant while coding and I can start to "see" the app work (or not work) as I talk.

真正帮助我改进设计的是找一个开发人员，QA人员、项目经理或任何碰巧路过的人，让他们尝试特定的小部件或屏幕。

当你看到别人第一次使用你的软件时，你会惊奇地发现

在进行UI设计时，以下是我始终牢记的一些事情(到目前为止还不是一个完整的列表):

Communicating a model. The UI is a narrative that explains a mental model to the user. This model may be a business object, a set of relationships, what have you. The visual prominence, spatial placement, and workflow ordering all play a part in communicating this model to the user. For example, a certain kind of list vs another implies different things, as well as the relationship of what's in the list to the rest of the model. In general I find it best to make sure only one model is communicated at a time. Programmers frequently try to communicate more than one model, or parts of several, in the same UI space. Consistency. Re-using popular UI metaphors helps a lot. Internal consistency is also very important. Grouping of tasks. Users should not have to move the mouse all the way across the screen to verify or complete a related sequence of commands. Modal dialogs and flyout-menus can be especially bad in this area. Knowing your audience. If your users will be doing the same activities over and over, they will quickly become power users at those tasks and be frustrated by attempts to lower the initial entry barrier. If your users do many different kinds of activities infrequently, it's best to ensure the UI holds their hand the whole time.

duffymo提醒了我为什么:许多程序员认为“*设计”=“美术”。

好的UI设计绝对不具有艺术性。它遵循坚实的原则，如果你有时间做研究，可以用数据来支持。

我认为所有程序员需要做的就是花时间学习原理。我认为我们的本性是尽可能地应用最佳实践，无论是在代码中还是在布局中。我们所需要做的就是让自己意识到我们工作这方面的最佳实践是什么。

登陆Slashdot，阅读任何与苹果有关的文章的评论。你会发现很多人都在谈论苹果的产品没有什么特别之处，把iPod和iPhone的成功归因于人们想要赶时髦。他们通常会浏览功能列表，并指出他们所做的一切都是早期MP3播放器或智能手机所没有的。

还有一些人喜欢iPod和iPhone，因为它们可以简单、轻松地满足用户的需求，而不需要参考使用手册。它的界面非常直观、容易记忆和发现。我对MacOSX的用户界面不像以前的版本那么喜欢，我认为它们已经放弃了一些有用的东西，而倾向于浮夸，但iPod和iPhone是卓越设计的例子。

If you are in the first camp, you don't think the way the average person does, and therefore you are likely to make bad user interfaces because you can't tell them from good ones. This doesn't mean you're hopeless, but rather that you have to explicitly learn good interface design principles, and how to recognize a good UI (much as somebody with Asperger's might need to learn social skills explicitly). Obviously, just having a sense of a good UI doesn't mean you can make one; my appreciation for literature, for example, doesn't seem to extend to the ability (currently) to write publishable stories.

所以，试着培养一种好的UI设计的感觉。这不仅仅延伸到软件领域。唐·诺曼的《日常事物的设计》是一本经典，还有其他的书。获取一些成功的UI设计的例子，并充分利用它们来感受其中的不同之处。认识到你可能不得不学习一种新的思考问题的方式，并享受它。