How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

Summary

Many years ago, while working at Apple and running a lab at WWDC, I met a guy who was using a piece of Apple software designed for creating interactive ads to design a Car Play user interface for a popular US car manufacturer. I was impressed by his ability to think outside the box and told him so. I mentioned to him how human interface designers at Apple were using Keynote to rapidly prototype user interfaces and animations. The discussion then took a strange turn onto spreadsheets. Spreadsheets? In my opinion, spreadsheets are one of the greatest user interface design tools ever created. I believe that the most effective tool for a job is one that gets out of the way as much as possible. Even better if it’s a tool that you already have access to, or at the very least, can use at no cost. Before you have time to load up Figma, Sketch, Photoshop, or any other design software, I’ll have already typed in my content placeholders in a spreadsheet and be most of my way towards a solution. I’ll be merging and moving cells at lightning speed—rationalising layouts, determining the optimal use of space, and creating order out of chaos. The purpose of using a tool that may seem ill-suited to the task at hand—designing user interfaces—is to liberate yourself from the clutter or baggage of content and style. This allows you to focus solely on layout, positioning, and hierarchy. You don’t have to worry about type sizes, or get bogged down with software choices. With a spreadsheet, it’s just the keyboard between you and the perfect layout. Let’s take your brain to another dimension One frequent criticism of spreadsheets is that they are “only 2D” or that a grid isn’t versatile enough to solve your problem. But if you pay close attention, you’ll realise that spreadsheets can occupy as many dimensions as you require by using multiple sheets. Like the stack of ledger paper that was used before spreadsheets were invented. An episode of The Computer Chronicles called “The Spreadsheet ...