Chapter Six

Design Rules and

Implementation support

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 Contents
Design rule
•Introduction

•Types of design rules

•Principle to support usability

•Standards

•Guidelines

•Golden Rules and Heuristics

•HCI design pattern

Implementation support
•Introduction

•windowing systems

•Interaction toolkits

•User interface management system

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 Design rules
• We require design rules, which are rules a designer can
follow in order to increase the usability of the eventual
software product.
• We can classify this rules along two dimensions, based
on the rule’s authority and generality.

• By authority, we mean an indication of whether or not

the rule must be followed in design or whether it is only
suggested.

• By generality, we mean whether rule can be applied to

many design situations or whether it is focused on a more
limited application situation
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 types of design rules
• principles
– abstract design rules
– low authority
– high generality

increasing generality
Guidelines
• standards

increasing generality
– specific design rules
– high authority Standards

– limited application
• guidelines increasing authority
increasing authority
– lower authority
– more general application
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 Design rules
Designing for maximum usability
– the goal of interaction design
• Principles of usability
– general understanding
• Standards and guidelines
– direction for design
• Design patterns
– capture and reuse design knowledge

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 Principles to support usability
Learnability
the ease with which new users can begin effective
interaction and achieve maximal performance
Flexibility
the multiplicity of ways the user and system exchange
information
Robustness
the level of support provided the user in determining
successful achievement and assessment of goals.

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 Principles of learnability
Predictability
– determining effect of future actions based on past
interaction history
Synthesizability
– assessing the effect of past actions
– Determining effects of past operations on current
state.
Familiarity
– New users can get familiar functionality and
interaction styles of apps.

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 Principles of learnability…
Generalizability
– extending specific interaction knowledge to new
situations
Consistency
– likeness in input/output behaviour arising from
similar situations or task objectives

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 Principles of flexibility
Dialogue initiative
– All dialogues done by simple request and response
system.
Multithreading
– ability of system to support user interaction for more
than one task at a time
Task migratability
– passing responsibility for task execution between
user and system
– Transfer execution of task from system to user/user
to system.
– E.g Spell checker
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 Principles of flexibility…
Substitutivity
– allowing equivalent values of input and output to be
substituted for each other
– E.g Percentage and Grade
Customizability
– modifiability of the user interface by
• user (adaptability)-system user to become familiar
with a new situation
• system (adaptivity)- system possessing an ability
to change to suit different conditions/situations
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 Principles of robustness
Observability
– ability of user to evaluate the internal state of the
system and gives proper feedbacks
Recoverability
– ability of user to take corrective action once an error
has been recognized
– To fixed and solved errors and get correct actions

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 Principles of robustness…
Responsiveness
– how the user perceives the rate of communication
with the system
– Real system feedbacks on users action
Task conformance
– degree to which system services support all of the
user's tasks/requirements
– The system support all the user requirements and
how the user interact with them.
– task completeness; task adequacy

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 Using design rules

increasing generality
Guidelines

increasing generality
Design rules
• suggest how to increase usability Standards

• differ in generality and authority

increasing authority
increasing authority

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 Standards
• set by national or international bodies to ensure
compliance by a large community

• Standards can apply specifically to either the hardware

or the software used to build the interactive system.

• international Organization for Standardization (ISO)

9241 defines usability as effectiveness, efficiency and
satisfaction with which users accomplish tasks.

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 Standards…
• ISO 9241, entitled Ergonomic Requirements for Office
Work with Visual Display Terminals (VDT)s:

• hardware issues: requirements for visual display,

keyboard layout, workstation layout, environment,
display with reflections, display colors and non-
keyboard input devices.

• software issues: general dialog principles, menu dialogs,

presentation of information, user guidance, command
dialogs, direct manipulation dialogs and form-filling
dialogs.

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 Guidelines
• It provides detail design specifications and clear
instructions to designers and developers.
• Design guidelines follow all principles that supports
Usability.
• more suggestive and general
• many textbooks and reports full of guidelines
• abstract guidelines (principles) applicable during early life
cycle activities
• detailed guidelines (style guides) applicable during later
life cycle activities
• understanding justification for guidelines aids in resolving
conflicts 16
 Golden rules and heuristics
• “Broad brush” design rules (not applicable to every
specific situation but) a Useful check list for good
design
• Any designer following even these simple rules will
produce a better system.
• Different collections of design rules include such as:
– Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules (rule of interface
design): provide a convenient and brief summary of
the key principles of interface design
– Norman’s 7 Principles (for Transforming Difficult
Tasks into Simple Ones)
– Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics (usability principles) 17
 Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules
1. Strive for consistency: consistent sequence actions should be
required in similar situation.
2. Enable frequent users to use shortcuts: such as abbreviations,
special key sequences and macros, to perform regular, familiar
actions more quickly.
3. Offer informative feedback for every user action
4. Design dialogs to yield closure so user knows when they have
completed a task
5. Offer error prevention and simple error handling
6. Permit easy reversal(failure) of actions
7. Support internal locus(central) of control so that the user is in
control of the system, which responds to his actions
8. Reduce short-term memory load: simpler for us to recognize
information rather than recall. 18
 Norman’s 7 Principles (for Transforming
Difficult Tasks into Simple Ones)
1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks. Tasks need to be simple in
order to avoid complex problem solving and excessive
memory load.

3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and

Evaluation.
4. Get the mappings right.
5. Exploit(use for advantage) the power of constraints, both
natural and artificial.
6. Design for error.
7. When all else fails, standardize. 19
 Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics
1. Visibility of system status
2. Match between system and the real world
3. User control and freedom
4. Consistency and standards
5. Error prevention
6. Recognition rather than recall
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design / good and simple
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, recover from error
10. Help and documentation
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 HCI design patterns
• An approach to capturing and reusing knowledge about detail of
successful design so that these can be applied again and again in
new situations
• A pattern is an invariant solution to a recurrent problem within a
specific context
• HCI design patterns document interaction models that make it easier
for users to understand an interface and accomplish their tasks.
Reasons to use design patterns
• Reducing time and costs in the design and development lifecycle
• Giving teams a common language, reducing misunderstandings that
arise from different vocabulary
• Making usable designs 21
 Benefits of design pattern

• Communication thought life cycle

• Reuse of design knowledge across products

• Enforces design discipline

• Presents arguments for design trade-offs

• Capturing contextual information

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 Implementation support

programming support that is provided for the

implementation of an interactive system.

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 Introduction
• The detailed design specification gives the programmer
instructions(what the interactive application must do)
• The programmer must translate that into machine executable
instructions(how that will be achieved on the available hardware
devices)
Layers of development tools
– windowing systems
– interaction toolkits (set of tools)
– user interface management systems

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 Introduction…
• Programing tools :-levels of services for programmers
 Include the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Code Editor, library,
Application Programming Interface (API), and Database Management System.

• Windowing elements :is a software suite that manages separately

different parts of display screens.
 core support for separate and simultaneous user-system activity

• Interaction toolkits: a way to encapsulate interface design concepts

for programmers, including widget sets, interface builders, and
development environments.
 bring programming closer to level of user perception

• User interface management systems: control relationship between

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presentation and functionality.
 End of the chapter

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