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Jakob Neilsen: 10 Best Application UIs of 2008

useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website

Jakob Neilsen, one of the leading usability, analysis and User Interface design experts in the world has announced 10 Best Application UIs of 2008 last week.

The results are:

The winners of the first competition to identify the 10 best-designed application user interfaces are:

Campaign Monitor by Eyeblaster (Israel): Integrated management of multiple advertising campaigns for media buyers.
CMSBox by CMSBox (Switzerland): Content management system.
FotoFlexer by Arbor Labs (USA): Photo editor.
PRISMAprepare by Océ (The Netherlands): Print shop software.
Seating Management by Magellan Network and DesignMap (USA): Hostess-stand reservation book for restaurants.
SQL diagnostic manager by Idera (USA): Database performance monitoring and diagnostics.
SugarSync by Sharpcast (USA): Synchronizing files across multiple computers.
SuperSaaS by SuperSaaS (The Netherlands): Creating and hosting scheduling and reservation systems.
Wufoo by Infinity Box, Inc. (USA): Online forms, surveys, invitations, and payments.
Xero by Xero (New Zealand): Accounting for small businesses.

As with all our design competitions, winners came from around the world, covering 4 continents. In this competition, we had our first winner from the Middle East, as well as a strong showing from The Netherlands, given its size.

Of the winning applications, 70% are Web-based and 40% are locally hosted. Yes, this sums to 110% — we counted SugarSync twice because it's both Web-based and PC-/Mac-based. In fact, like several other winners, it also has a component for mobile devices.

Although dedicated mobile apps are not yet good enough to win in their own right, it was striking how many of this year's winners have a mobile component. Mobile is definitively the trend to watch for next year, and any application owner should think hard about whether and how to add mobile features in 2009.