It’s no great mystery that truly great user interfaces are the ones that are engineered to stay out of the way. ‘Staying out of the way’ means not distracting your users. Rather, good UIs let your users complete goals. The result? A reduction in training and support costs, and happier, satisfied and highly engaged users. When getting started on a new interface, make sure to remember these fundamentals …

With the recently launched WordPress 2.7, bloggers now marvel at how clean, beautiful and usable is the new interface. But do you remember what it used to be a couple of months ago? For those who started using WordPress years ago, can you remember what your admin area looked like?