Graphical user interfaces: mess them up!

Today´s graphical user interfaces simulate a perfect world. Windows have always the same look and buttons have identical shapes and colors and are aligned to regular grids. The only distinction between graphical elements is their label. The current visual design of user interfaces ignores the capabilities of modern displays for an effective visual coding and the resulting uniformess makes it very difficult for the user to recognize graphical elements at first sight. This paper presents some ideas and propositions for the visual design and the look & feel - concept of next generation user interfaces. New concepts for the layout and the visual coding of graphical elements are proposed. The suggested new layout and coding rules should help the user to recognize and remember graphical elements easily and to distinguish them from other elements of the same type