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User Interface Design
Introduction
Overview of guidelines for user interface design
Principles of user interface design User interface design process.
Principles of User Interface Design
Layout Content Awareness Aesthetics User Experience Consistency Minimize Effort
Layout
The screen should be divided into areas that are used consistently for the same purpose, e.g. top for commands and navigation, middle of the screen for input/output.
The screen should be divided so as to provide natural intuitive flow and minimize the user’s movement.
Content Awareness User must always be aware of where
they are in the system with minimum effort.
All interfaces should have titles. Menus should show you where you are,
where you came from and where you can get to.
Field labels should be short and specific. Field labels should be clear and
unambiguous.
Aesthetics The interface must be pleasing to the eye. All forms and reports must have a minimum
amount of white space. The font size should not be less that 8 point
and 10 point is usually preferred. Different font size should used to distinguish
between different types of information, Underlining and italic makes text harder to
read and should thus be avoided. San-serif fonts, e.g. Arial, Helvetica, are most
readable for computer screens.
Aesthetics Capital letters should only be used for
titles. Too many different colours and patterns
make for difficult reading and should thus be minimized.
Colours can be used to differentiate between different types of information, e.g. to differentiate headings from regular text.
Different colours tend to provoke emotions in different ways.
Colour blindness
User Experience Novice users vs. experienced users. The priority of novice users is ease of learning. The priority of experienced users is ease of
use. Novice users and experienced users have
different behaviour patterns. The user interface must provide a balance
between quick access to commonly used functions and guidance through less well-known functions.
Guidance can be possible switched on and off
Consistency Consistency forms the basis of ease
of use, ease of learning and aesthetics.
The needs to be consistency in the navigation controls.
There must also be consistency in the terminology used.
Consistency will enable the user to predict the effect of his/her action.
Minimize Effort The minimum amount of effect should
be needed by the user to perform tasks. A minimum amount of mouse clicks or
keystrokes should be used to execute actions.
The “three clicks rule” can be used for this purpose.
This rule states that each action should be performed with a minimum of three keystrokes or mouse clicks
User Interface Design Process Use scenario development Interface design structure Interface standards design Interface design prototyping Interface evaluation During design one moves back and
forth between these steps instead of performing them sequentially.
Use Scenario Development
A use scenario lists the steps that must be performed by a user to achieve a particular task.
A use scenario is determined by specifying a path through the use case, i.e. a use scenario is a narrative description of a use case.
Use Cases Use cases are used to depict how a
computer system interacts with its environment and thus illustrates the actions performed by the users of the system.
Each use case describes one interaction between the user and the system, however each use case may have many paths.
For example, when searching for a CD in on online CD system the user can search for it via the title or artist. Each path is called scenario.
Use Case Descriptions vs. Diagrams
A use case description describes this narratively while a use case diagram depicts this pictorially.
A use case description is usually firstly created and this description is then converted into a use case diagram.
Example
The customer browses the catalogue andadds desired items to the shopping basket.When the customer wishes to pay, thecustomer describes the shipping and credit cardinformation and confirms the sale. The systemchecks the authorization on the credit andconfirms the sale both immediately and with afollow-up E-mail.
Use Cases for the Example: Buy Product
Customer browses through catalogue and selects items to buy.
Customer goes to check out Customer fills in shipping information
(address, next day or 3-day delivery) System presents full pricing information,
including shipping Customer fills in credit card information System authorizes purchase System confirms sale immediately System sends confirming E-mail to customer
Buy Product: Alternatives
Alternative: Authorization fails - At step 6 system fails to authorize credit purchase. Allow customer to re-enter credit card information and re-try
Alternative: Regular customer 3a. System displays current shipping
information, pricing information, and last four digits of credit card information
3b. Customer may accept or override these defaults
Return to primary scenario at step 6.
.
Interface Design Structure This phase involves describing the
different components of the interface and how the interact.
A window navigation diagram (WND) depicting different screens, forms an reports and the relationship between them is used for this purpose.
A WND is used to illustrate the state of changes in the interface.
A WND is Composed of: Each box represents a user interface
component, e.g. a menu or a form. Transitions between the components are
illustrated by a double or single arrow. A single arrow indicates that a return to the
calling state is not needed. A double arrow indicates that a return to the
calling state is needed. Each component is described as a
stereotype, e.g. <<form>>, <<menu>>. Each component is also given a label, e.g.
Menu A, Form J.
.
Interface Design Standards This refers to the standards that are
applied to components of the interface. There generally standards for the
following components: interface metaphors, interface objects, interface actions, interface icons and interface templates.
.
Interface Metaphors These are basically concepts from the
real world that used to model a computer system.
For example, an online CD sales system may use a music store as a metaphor, with a shopping cart, etc.
The metaphor is meant to help the user to conceptualise the system and to predict certain actions.
A system can have an overall metaphor or different parts of a system can use different metaphors.
.
Interface Objects This refers to specifying the names of the
objects that will make up the interface. The usually correspond to class names.
For examples an online CD sales system the shopping cart will be called the “shopping cart”, CDs maybe called CDs or albums.
Both the software developer and user must agree on the names used.
.
Interface Actions This involves defining the navigation
and command language. There must be consensus between
users and developers uses of terminology, e.g. “buy” vs. “purchase”.
.
Interface Icons Icons are defined for specific actions,
e.g. a disk can represent the action of saving.
Use icons that are used in commonly-used software packages and will be known by the users of the system.
Sometimes icons can cause some confusion so use icons that are not ambiguous.
.
Interface Templates These templates defines the
appearance of each screen. The layout is described in terms of the
position of the navigation area, status bar, form, reports and the colour schemes that will be applied.
It will also describe the view types, e.g. cascading windows and where standard interface operations such as “File”, “View” and “Edit”.
.
Interface Design Prototyping One of the following techniques is used for
prototyping: storyboarding, HTML prototyping or language prototyping.
All three techniques maybe used at different stages of the project.
Storyboarding is the fastest, with language prototyping being the slowest and HTML prototyping falling in between.
Similarly, storyboarding is the least expensive, HTML of medium cost, and language prototyping the most expensive.
.
Storyboarding This is usually done on a paper and
consists of hand-drawn pictures as to what the user-interfaces will look like and the flow from one screen to the next.
This is the simplest of all three techniques.
Storyboarding is generally used for well understood parts of the system
.
HTML Prototyping The designer uses HTML to create the
prototype. This technique has the advantage of the
users being able to use the prototype and hence provide feedback on the ease of use, etc.
The disadvantage of this approach is that screens will not appear in exactly the same format as they will in the final product.
.
Language Prototype This involves creating a prototype of the
interfaces in the same language that the system will be coded in.
The advantage of this approach is that the users will be able to see exactly what the screens look like.
The disadvantage is that it takes longer to build prototypes using this approach than the other to techniques.
Is used for parts of the system that are not well-defined.
.
Interface Evaluation Interface evaluation is performed to identify
areas of improvement for of the interfaces and hence is performed more than once during the software design process.
This is often left to the end and is the last step in the overall process.
Four techniques that are commonly user for interface evaluation are: heuristic evaluation, walk-through evaluation, interactive evaluation, and formal usability testing.
.
Heuristic Evaluation A checklist of the different design
principles that the and interface navigation, input, and output principles (will be discussed later) is constructed.
A minimum of three project team members test the interface using the checklist individually and meet and discuss their findings.
.
Walk-Through Evaluation
The project team walks the users through the interface.
The users are required to suggest changes to the interfaces.
.
Interactive Evaluation Instead of the team members walking the
users through the interface, the users interact with the interface on a one-on-one basis.
The users then inform the project team of what they like and do not like about the interfaces.
The project team also makes note of any confusion and misinterpretations of the interface by the a number of users.
.
Formal Usability Testing This form of testing can only be applied to
language prototypes. As with interactive evaluation a single users
tests the software on a one-on-one basis. The evaluation is conducted in a lab equipped
with video cameras to capture the users response to the interface.
Each user is given a specific set of tasks. There is no interaction between the users and
the project team and the user is not given any assistance.
The drawback of this method is that it is expensive.
.