Old-school prefs UI
I just created this UI for a tiny little utility app I'm writing (which unsurprisingly lets you set up and customise Growl notifications for new mail in Microsoft Outlook 2011 Mac).
I think I've come full circle to enjoying the simplicity and cleanliness of this kind of standard-controls, readable prefs interface. I also really, really like options that are arranged in a visual hierarchy, are unambiguously worded, and can be read as a series of sentences (with suitably-worded popups etc interspersed through the text as required).
It would have been easy (in terms of motivation) to complicate this interface with rule-editors, sub-checkboxes and so forth, but it's just not necessary for the task. It's not perfect, but it's pretty usable.
Even if you don't want your prefs UI to look like this, at least sketch it this way first.
Old-school prefs UI
I just created this UI for a tiny little utility app I'm writing (which unsurprisingly lets you set up and customise Growl notifications for new mail in Microsoft Outlook 2011 Mac).
I think I've come full circle to enjoying the simplicity and cleanliness of this kind of standard-controls, readable prefs interface. I also really, really like options that are arranged in a visual hierarchy, are unambiguously worded, and can be read as a series of sentences (with suitably-worded popups etc interspersed through the text as required).
It would have been easy (in terms of motivation) to complicate this interface with rule-editors, sub-checkboxes and so forth, but it's just not necessary for the task. It's not perfect, but it's pretty usable.
Even if you don't want your prefs UI to look like this, at least sketch it this way first.