(photo by uptal of flickr)

Web application designer's can take inspiration from the Google User Experience Design Principles. These 10 guidelines are great to keep in mind and help you think about the people who will have to use your web application every day.  The principles tie directly into the Ten things Google has found to be true.

The first two are probably the most important to us here at Solution Grove.

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.

The first principle means to always think of the task the real people using your application want to accomplish. Don't expose your internal model of the problem the users. They are not interested in your expert use of the relational model.

The second is pretty obivous, but it can be difficult with graphics, css, javascript and all to keep a page responsive. Users can notice this right away so always make sure you keep it in mind. We use Firebug and Yslow Firefox plugins to keep a handle on this, as well as backend tuning of database queries. 

This principle

4. Engage beginners and attract experts.

is one of the most difficult to get right. It means to make the basic features accessible right away to novice users, but to allow expert users to get more work done more quickly by providing shortcuts and support for their unique usage patterns. I can't think of any way to get this right without actual user testing.

As the Google folks say, you can't always get everything perfect based on these principles. Each implementation is a leanring experience. The goal is to never forget these and get a little better with each iteration. 

Everyone who builds an application, web or otherwise, should have these type of guidelines to help keep on focus and ensure happy users.