useit.com Papers and Essays 1995 Design for Sun Home page design Design E

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Version E

This was the first design produced after we had chosen the final cover story for the rollout of the new design: Sun's new Java technology. The previous iterations had all used a story about the use of PhotoShop on Sun workstations because we had a nice cover illustration available for that story from the advertising campaign.

For the HotJava story, we needed a cover illustration and as an initial placeholder we picked the project mascot, "Duke." The test users did not like this illustration, though. Duke was designed to be shown as a rather small figure and did not communicate "advanced new technology" when he was enlarged.

This was our first design with real icons for the various buttons. Notice how some of the icons are larger and more colorful than others to indicate a prioritzation of the information. As always, some of the initial icons turned out not to work very well when they were tested. Here are some of the user comments:

• Sun on the Net icon: a punctured balloon, a snowman, a talking collapsing world, or an idea coming out of a globe.
• What's happening icon: a parade, "people at a Sun launch" (pretty close), and an "intensely ugly logo with people in front of it." We decided to simply remove this icon from subsequent designs.
• Sales and Service icon: gas station, diner, public restroom, store to buy Sun equipment (very close to the intended meaning), and "fast food."
• Technology and Developers icon: "thunder and lightening," "electric - looks painful," "person being killed by technology," "dance machine," and "why do Sun developers look bug-eyed?"