An AI and Developer-Friendly Framework for Building Usable Software
a new book and video series by Tony Alicea
Normal UI is an AI-friendly, learnable, reusable approach to designing software workflows that are consistently more usable.
It's a unique way of thinking about UI screens based on decades of usability principles and my 25 years as a web developer, user experience designer, user researcher, and usability test facilitator.
From my book and video series you'll get decades of usability principles and hard-earned lessons from thousands of usability tests distilled into an easy-to-learn, fast-to-implement workflow sketching and design method.
*Watch a video on Normal UI from my channel, then grab the book and course.*
After 25 years of building web apps and running thousands of usability tests, I've watched the same patterns repeat:
Using a premium UI component library doesn't guarantee your app is usable. You can have the most elegant code and stunning visuals, but if users can't complete their tasks, your app will fail.
In the age of AI-generated code, successful web apps are usable web apps.
Normal UI is a practical, learnable system that helps developers and designers make better usability decisions without requiring deep UX expertise.
The core concept is simple: Think of your user workflows like database normalization.
The benefits appear when you know which approach to use when.
Plus you don't need to be a designer. If you can draw boxes, circles (not perfect ones), and triangles, you can use Normal UI. Or draw in popular tools like FigJam.
✅ It's unifies your team around a methodology
Designers and devs can both use the same terminologies and understand what is needed. Normal UI improves your team's communication and cohesion on software projects.
✅ It's AI-teachable
You can guide AI code generation with specific workflow concepts, preventing the "fast code, bad UX" trap. You give an LLM the same terminology your team uses, and it knows what kind of UI workflows to generate.
✅ It improves code quality
Normalized workflows often lead to cleaner architecture, better accessibility, and improved performance.
✅ It works
Proven across hundreds of real-world usability tests over two decades.
Normal UI is a powerful compaion to AI-assisted development:
Guide AI with precision: Instead of asking for "a user dashboard," specify "a normalized checkout workflow" or "a denormalized filtering interface" and get consistent, usable results.
Prevent AI usability pitfalls: AI excels at generating functional components but doesn't understand when dangerous workflows (like sending mass emails) need to be slowed down across multiple confirmation steps.
Scale your UX impact: Teach AI the Normal UI framework once, then apply it consistently across all your projects.
The name comes from database normalization, a concept most developers already understand. Just as you can normalize or denormalize data structures, you can normalize or denormalize user interfaces.
This familiar metaphor makes the framework immediately accessible to developers while providing a shared language for discussing usability decisions with designers and stakeholders.
This isn't a 400-page academic tome. Normal UI is designed to be read fast and implemented immediately. The concise format and actionable examples mean you can start improving your web apps right away.
Every concept is backed by real-world testing and proven results, not theoretical frameworks that sound good but don't work in practice.
You can read even more details in my blog post on Normal UI.
Normal UI isn't just for human users—it's designed to work seamlessly with AI tools. Whether you're using AI to assist in app creation, generate prototypes, or test usability, this framework ensures your designs are easy for AI to understand and implement.
With Normal UI, you'll learn how to craft clear, structured UIs that make it simple to guide AI in building normalized or denormalized workflows.
Future-proof your web apps with a system that pairs perfectly with modern AI-driven development workflows.
Take your understanding to the next level with the Normal UI Video Series. Watch as I break down real-world examples, show you how to implement the techniques, and demonstrate how to work with AI to streamline your app design process.
You can keep building apps that look great but frustrate users, or you can learn a proven framework that consistently delivers usable software.
Normal UI gives you the tools to harness AI's incredible speed while ensuring the end result actually works for real people.
The choice is yours. The framework is here. The results are proven.
Click here to download the first four chapters free.
Here is the table of contents of the complete book:
Hi, I'm Tony Alicea. I've been an application developer, database architect, UX designer, manager, and tech educator for over 25 years.
Over 360,000 students have enrolled in my courses on Udemy, Pluralsight, and Teachable (where this book and video series is hosted). I've been a speaker at conferences and a guest on popular dev podcasts. You can read more about me and my courses on my site.
I've built web applications used by thousands and facilitated hundreds of usability tests. Normal UI is the result of that work.
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