GUIcentric

GUIcentric describes a design and development approach that gives primary emphasis to graphical user interfaces as the main mode of interaction between users and software. The term highlights visual controls, immediate feedback, and task-oriented workflows, often prioritizing aesthetics and usability over low-level scripting, command-line access, or programmatic APIs.

In practice, GUI-centric design focuses on layout, widgets, visual consistency, drag-and-drop, and WYSIWYG workflows. It relies on GUI toolkits and responsive design to support multiple devices. Prototyping, usability testing, and design systems are common methods to iterate GUI-centric features.

Advantages include faster user onboarding, intuitive usage for non-technical users, and easier task completion through discoverable controls. It can also enable rapid iteration and visual consistency across platforms.

Criticisms note that GUI-centric systems may underprovide for power users who want automation, bulk processing, or scriptability. They can induce bloat, depend on platform-specific GUI frameworks, and obscure underlying data models or APIs. Performance and accessibility concerns can also arise if GUI abstractions hide complexity or introduce latency.

In contemporary software, GUI-centric approaches often coexist with API-centric or data-centric layers, with the GUI serving as the presentation layer. Related concepts include human-computer interaction, usability engineering, and design systems.