Resource to learn good UI techniques, more intuitive and artistic and user friendly

Question

No matter how good coding I do, I am more often than not pleased with the screens I develop for my application in flex in first go, which obviously results in re do and wastage of time. Only after changing it 2-3 times the team agrees on its "user friendlyness". Could someone point to me a good location/book/website where I could see/learn UI development techniques. Not technically but artistically or user friendly.

One example that I need now is a control UI to be able to select multiple nodes of a xml at 3rd level deep (which will thus involve selection of nodes at two levels).

I used two combo boxes one after another in which content of one combo depended on another (and used such combo boxes in a grid to enable multiple selection at same time). But that does look nice to team here. Say its not "user friendly".

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

it might be worth browsing over some of the user interface guides available for specific systems:

1. Apple Human Interface Guidelines
2. Microsoft User Experience Interaction Guidelines
3. BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet UI Guidelines

etc.

there seems to be specific UI design guidelines for every system, and i'm willing to bet that they suggest pretty much the same thing as the others, generally speaking.