This article the 5th installment in of a series titled 'How I build an application'. You can find the other installments and subsection here.

Nothing is more critical then the User Interface (UI) of an application. All things come together in the UI. If your database design is top notch, but your UI sucks, your application sucks. Examples of this are all over the computer world.

That being said, I definitely wouldn't consider myself a great UI designer. I can achieve a passing grade, but there are giants in this field that I am constantly bowing to. I work much better with the bottom 90% of the application. I'm the guy who engineers the application with the care of a Ferrari mechanic, but has difficulty with designing the seat to perfectly fit with the driver in a way that makes the car feel like an extension of your body.  read more »