July 6th, 2007

I’m so jealous of people who excel at graphic design and user interface design. I like to think of myself as a fairly competent programmer. I think I have the skills to be able to pick up a new language quickly and get reasonable results. As far as graphic design and user interface design goes, I suck.

It is a genuine struggle for me to design a user interface. Sure, I can whack together something that does the job, but if you look at it with any kind of ‘user interface design’ in mind you see that it is severely lacking. I stare in wonder and amazement at good user interfaces, wondering why I can’t come up with something similar or as efficient.

I don’t believe my lack of skill comes from not trying. I spend a lot of time drawing user interface designs on paper or reading user interface guidelines, but I just don’t seem to get any better.

I guess it’s just one of those things that I will always struggle with, which is a bit of a shame because I actually enjoy it.