title: Top tips for designing GUIs?
body: <p>A while back I read (before I lost it) a great book called <a href="http://www.gui-bloopers.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">GUI Bloopers</a> which was full of examples of <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/238177/worst-ui-youve-ever-used">bad GUI design</a> but also full of useful tidbits like <em>Don't call something a</em> <code>Dialog</code> <em>one minute and a</em> <code>Popup</code> <em>the next</em>.</p>
  
  <p>What top tips would you give for designing/documenting a GUI? It would be particularly useful to hear about widgets you designed to cram readable information into as little screen real-estate as possible.</p>
  
  <p>I'm going to roll this off with one of my own: <strong>avoid trees</strong> (e.g. Swing's <code>JTree</code>) unless you really can't avoid it, or have a unbounded hierarchy of stuff. I have found that users don't find them intuitive and they are hard to navigate and filter.</p>
  
  <p>PS. I think this question differs from <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/136910/gui-design-how-do-you-do-it">this one</a> as I'm asking for generalist tips</p>