Like Brian, I’ve been frustrated by something inane lately, only it doesn’t have to do with code that’s not working. It’s simply that something doesn’t feel right about my interface. I have a series of navigational tabs on the top, then a column of content (a graph that consumes the width of my column). Below the graph, I need to show information about the book I’m charting, and provide some navigational and things-you-can-do type links. What I’m talking about is similar to the existing interface. Yet for this redesign, that general structure wasn’t working. I really just had this vague uneasiness about how it looked, and I experienced some frustration. When that happens, I don’t work much. In fact, tonight I ended up watching Saw II instead of working.

After the movie, I came to my desk and removed that sidebar. I widened the section that pertains to the book, enlarged the book image, and suddenly felt some relief. The vertical flow of the page seems less broken up now. It looked right, if in need of some styling.

I certainly don’t consider myself a design expert, but I did read Jenifer Tidwell’s Designing Interfaces book and took a course on human factors in college. The rest I’m gleaning from looking at a lot of web pages in my spare time. The fact that I can feel relief from “fixing” something like this gives me hope.