Interaction Design I:

“Designing the User Interface” by Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant

The article provides guidelines as to how to improve poorly designed user interfaces which generate “debilitating stress and anxiety” (60). Some of these guidelines include:

• Standardize task sequences across similar conditions
• Make embedded links descriptive
• Use heading conceptually related to the content they describe
• Use check boxes for binary choices
• Develop pages that print properly
• Use thumbnail images to preview larger images.

In order to organize the display, designers can follow the following guidelines:

• Terminology, abbreviations, formats, colors, capitalization should be standardized
• Users should not be required to remember information from one screen to the next. Tasks should be arranged so that completion occurs with a few actions, minimizing the chance of forgetting a step.
• Users should be able to adjust the display of data to execute the task at hand.

Designers should know the skill set of users to design appropriately. Novices require sufficient “feedforward”, feedback and tasks with fewer steps to help build confidence. Experts require response time and non-distracting feedback so that they can get their work done quickly.

Designers should not overuse design decisions to gain user’s attention. Be sure that interfaces are simple, logically organized and well-labeled. Designers should follow the eight golden rules of interface design to guide them:

• Strive for consistency
• Cater to universal usability (novices and experts)
• Offer informative feedback
• Design dialogs to yield closure to give users a feeling of closure and accomplishment
• Prevent errors
• Permit easy retrieval of actions; actions should be reversible
• Make users the initiators of actions instead of the responders to actions
• Reduce short-term memory load