Monday, Feb. 17th 2020
Collection of Human Interface and Software Design Guides
After posting about the OpenStep User Interface Guide, I started to wonder how many different human interface guides or software design guides that I could find from the past and present. It doesn’t seem like there’s a good collection of these anywhere on the internet, especially in regard to past software design guides. I think there’s a lot of value in these even outside of just being a historic reference.
If you have a link or PDF of human interface or software design guidelines to past or present software that you think I should include, please contact me: @rectangular.
Current
Apple
Microsoft
Other
Archival
Apple
- Apple II c. 1985
- iOS: c. 2011, c. 2013
- Macintosh Human Interface Guidlines: c. 1992, c. 1995
- Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines: c. 2005, c. 2009
- Newton: 2.0 User Interface Guidelines c. 1996, User Interface Guidelines for Newton OS 2.1 Keyboard Enhancements c. 1996
IBM
Microsoft
- The Windows Interface Guidelines — A Guide for Designing Software c. 1995
- Official Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers c. 2001
NeXT
- NeXTSTEP User Interface Guidelines: Release 3 c. Nov 1993
- OpenStep User Interface Guidelines: c. 1996
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
- Indigo Magic User Interface Guidelines: c. 1994, c. 1996, c. 1996 v2
- IRIX User Interface Guidelines: c. 1998, c. 2001
Sun Microsystems
- Common Desktop Environment: c. 2002
Xerox
1 This is before IBM OS/2. I assume it’s referencing DOS based applications.
Updated on Tuesday, June 7th 2022