我们是否可以做些什么来重新训练我们的大脑，使其更有效地设计出令人愉悦和有用的演示层?

是的。观察那些试图使用你的软件的用户，不要帮助他们。也被称为可用性测试。

The basic idea of usability testing is that you take someone with a similar background to your target audience, who hasn’t seen your software before and ask them to perform a typical series of tasks. Ideally they should try to speak out loud what they are thinking to give you more insight into their thought processes. You then watch what they do. Critically, you do not assist them, no matter how irresistible the urge. The results can be quite surprising and highly revealing. Usability testing can be very fancy with one way mirrors, video cameras etc, but that really isn’t necessary to get most of the benefits. There is a good description of how to carry out usability tests in Krug’s excellent book Don’t make me think: a common sense guide to web usability. Most of his advice is equally applicable to testing desktop applications.

关于用户反馈，如果你使用的是Mac, Silverback (http://silverbackapp.com/)是一个很好的工具。我建议创建一个要做的事情列表(找到这部电影，观看预告片，找到这个演员的这部电影，购买它，等等)，让用户坐在那里，沿着列表走下去。

最重要的是不要告诉他们怎么做，而是看看他们如何完成任务(对于第二个场景，他们是按角色浏览还是按字母顺序查找场景?)你可以从你公司里不懂技术的人开始，然后到Craigslist网站或街上随便找个人来测试。

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.

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

阅读苹果人机界面指南。

许多开发人员认为，因为他们会写代码，他们就可以做所有的事情。设计界面是一种完全不同的技能，在我上大学的时候根本没有教过这门技能。这不是与生俱来的。

另一本好书是唐纳德·诺曼的《日常事物的设计》。