Good interface design is like the air we breathe – it’s there when you need it and you use it without thinking. If you’ve ever used a bad interface design, struggled to get around a site, clicked away because you couldn’t figure out what was going on, not been able to complete a task you had in mind, or just been plain confused, you’ll know the perils of going wrong in this area.

Websites are not pretty pictures, they are there to be used and consumed, so it’s pretty important that as web designers we spend a good portion of time thinking about usability. In this article we’ll consider some of the big usability issues and my tips for being a better interface designer.

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In this post I’m going to show you a set of twenty screen mockups for a real world project that I’ve been working on – the upcoming redesign and rerelease of our design and inspiration gallery FaveUp. I’ll explain some of the why’s and how’s that went into the design, how I use design mocks to spec out a web app, as well as some general notes on the design. The new site that we’re calling Creattica Inspire is now being developed by our crack Melbourne development team and will be hitting the interweb tubes as one of our first releases of 2009.

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As important as information and interface design are, it’s the satisfied feeling of designing something that just plain looks awesome that keeps us going during those times when the creative well is dry, when you’ve stared at a blank canvas for hours, when you’ve saved a hundred attempt.psd’s, and when you’re fed up of design. It’s because you know that when you have that finished, polished, veritable work of art up on your screen, and you’ve switched Photoshop into full screen mode and you’re looking at it from different angles around the room, and you’re basking in the glory of your perfectly positioned pixels, you just know that this is the greatest profession in the world!

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