Sometimes, it’s even the simplest interfaces that are the hardest to build - when you have a huge amount of features and only a limited amount of space on the screen, it can be challenging to cut features out, or hide them elsewhere in the app (yet still have them be accessible). We’ve created a collection of 15 applications that have done an astonishing job of uncluttering the interface and leaving a beautiful, simple design that’s a joy to use.

Tweetbot

Tweetbot by app designers Tapbots is an iPhone app that makes tweeting easier, and has clever shortcuts for viewing entire conversations and for favouriting tweets.

Hipmunk

Hipmunk aims to take the agony out of booking a flight online by displaying flight search results in a much simpler, easier to understand way.

Square

Square allows you to take credit card payments on your iPhone or iPad, easily.

New York Times Skimmer

Skimmer by the New York Times is a different interface for browsing through news, predominantly designed for tablets. As it’s name suggests, it makes skimming through news stories easy and fun.

Batch

Batch is a new iPhone app which makes uploading and sharing photos through Facebook & Twitter a breeze.

TeuxDeux

TeuxDeux is a task management app that makes adding and crossing off tasks simple. It’s perfect for people that like their to-do applications minimal and unfussy, but still beautiful.

Greplin

While Google handles searching the web, Greplin aims to help you search through your life. The app connects to your email accounts, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more, and lets you search everything all in one go. Despite it’s complexity, the interface has been kept beautifully simple and elegant.

Oink

Oink is the newest iPhone app from Digg founder Kevin Rose.  Instead of rating places, Oink allows you to rate the things inside - everything from the best coffee in a café to the best films on at the cinema. The interface is uncluttered and sophisticated, and it’s beautiful design feels natural and intuitive to use.

Calvetica

Calvetica is an iPhone calendar app that aims to provide a minimalist way to organise your life. It’s clearly had a lot of attention, design-wise, but it’s also simple and easy to use, whether you’re drilling down to specific events or just quickly glancing at it - it’s simplicity gives you the information you need, and nothing else.

Flipboard

Flipboard is an iPad app that turns RSS feeds into easy-to-browse articles, like a digital magazine. The interface is both beautiful and intuitive, which makes the whole experience fun.

Stypi

Stypi is an online document editor, similar to Google Docs, which allows multiple people to all work on writing the same document at the same time. It’s a fairly complicated idea, but it’s been executed perfectly here - following the Apple philosophy, Stypi “just works”.

Basecamp

Basecamp is a project management tool which has both a web interface and an HTML 5 mobile optimized site. Both interfaces work perfectly for the medium they’re on - it’s always easy to navigate around and view calendars, timelines and tasks and clearly a lot of thought has been put into usability.

Twitter for iPad

Twitter’s official iPad app looks simple, but hides a wealth of features and shortcuts. Selecting a tweet and sliding down with two fingers, for example, reveals the whole conversation. It’s a brilliant example of a stunningly elegant user interface.

Reeder

Reeder for iPad makes RSS feeds easier to browse through and has clearly focused on making a simple, beautiful and usable app. Scanning through articles and blog posts is very intuitive and the design of the content is easy to read, with plenty of white space.

Things

Things for iPad is a task management app that allows you to tag tasks, add them to particular projects and archive old tasks in a logbook. Despite having quite a few features for power users and fans of “getting things done”, the interface keeps things simple - only showing you what you need and never cluttering up the screen with unnecessary distractions.

Are there any user interfaces that you think deserve a mention? Let us know in the comments.

About the author

Alex writes for printing experts Print Express, who specialise in postcards, business cards and flyer printing.

Other Beautiful User Interfaces?

Go ahead and join the discussion! If you liked this post, why not subscribing to KnowTeBook.com or checking out our Facebook or Twitter page?

Write guest posts for KnowTeBook

If you’re a writer and know a lot about app design, mobile marketing, social networks …… or owning a small business, you can give great advices on branding, marketing, productivity, dealing with clients (and other related topics), or you can write ‘how-to’ posts, please get in contact with Sebastian.

How Does CS Review Work?

It’s as easy as following a few steps:

1. Start a review directly from Photoshop CS5, InDesign CS5, Illustrator CS5, or Premiere Pro CS5.
2. Invite clients and colleagues to review your projects online, eliminating the need for FTP servers, or printouts, or email miscommunications.
3. Comments from others are added in a simple web interface without needing any other software to view your projects.
4. View and respond to comments in real-time directly from within your Creative Suite software, making it easy to track and take action on feedback.

Let us know what you think.

This kind of scenario happens with every user in search of information on the Internet. After all, every user has several websites to browse through and choose. The need of the user is sadly not always the first thing that is taken into consideration whilst designing any website. Website owners and web designers then need to think and know whether the website performs as is expected for their business!

The most important thing for any website is interactivity. Why interactivity is what many would question! Well, the reason is that a website needs to capture attention and keep users on the page within the first few seconds. Yes, the first few seconds a user spends on the page is of utmost important. And whether people agree or not, the old saying where first impressions make the last impressions holds true! A website that can capture attention of the user to keep him/her on the page can be termed as truly successful!

Things to know for web design:

• Your website should be user-friendly
• The website should attract attention
• Study the target group for the design process
• The information should be presented appropriately
• It needs to highlight important points clearly
• Use of interactivity to keep users on page

Websites that engage with interactivity

Wrangler

We all know about the popularity of the brand Wrangler. This website displays the products in a very unique way. As seen in the image, a user has to unzip the jacket to browse the website further. The visuals then unfold in a very interesting manner. The collection can be viewed only after the user performs some action on the website!

Mnatwork

The design company, magneticNorth has used interactivity in a creative way. Their simple concept of drawing and discovering gives an exclusive touch to the website. At first instance, the website only has one statement in the beginning, which is ‘Draw and Discover’. As a user actually draws across the screen, various elements about the website are discovered. The display of their portfolio in this creative manner speaks volumes about the company!

Bebopjeans

Bebop, a lifestyle apparel company has displayed the required information in a creative way. The use of Flash with graphics and the entire presentation keeps users on the page. There is an interesting mix of elements. These creative web pages keep users interested for more!

Extre

This clothing store has made use of interactivity to displays details. This sure is attractive as compared to websites that place rows of photographs next to each other. Every bit of information is displayed through the circular forms of the plant. It engages users on the page whilst displaying information.

Apple Ipad

Also big images catch the users eys as Apple is used to do. This helps in presenting the information about the service in an engaging manner. Users need to perform some activity on the page to view more information. The design along with the content thus needs to be catchy!

All these examples of websites are uncommon although the topics can be termed as common. To put it across simply, there are so many websites related to clothing and accessories. Yet, it is not always the brand name that can cause users to browse through a website. An attractive website will do all that and much more for any web designer or web master.

So, do you have what it takes to make your website successful? Looking forward to your replies!

If you liked this post, why do you not subscribe to KnowTeBook.com?

About the author

Poonam Agarwal works as Program Manager at Harbinger Group and is looks after for Raptivity Web Expert, software to bring web pages alive through Interactivity. This software helps to add interactivity to websites without programming! She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and is an active blogger.

Write guest posts for KnowTeBook

If you’re a writer and know a lot about design, coding, …… or owning a small business, you can give great advices on branding, marketing, productivity, dealing with clients (and other related topics), or you can write ‘how-to’ posts, please get in contact with Sebastian.

See inspiration source for mega drop-down menus.

Hop over to Alen’s post to read on

This article by tripwire covers end to end by presenting you with more than 160 high quality Tutorial that guides you step by step in building up a web interface all the way from scratch. The article will take some time to download because of the many images!

Browser components are also separated onto individual layers so you can adjust them or switch them off them as you like:

• Page title
  (text layer that you can simply type your title into)
• Address field
  (text layer that you can simply type your URL into)
• Favicon
• Scrollbar
• Dropshadow
  (for OS X browsers)

After creating the design follow part 2 of this walkthrough of coding up a graphical website layout into valid, standards compliant XHTML and CSS. Starting with the initial process of exporting the individual images from the Photoshop document through to building the complete page.

Designoogle is a site where you can find design inspiration based on adjectives, charectoristics, colors, etc. Need ideas for texture? Try searching for “rough texture”, looking for great red colored design? Search for “red”.