Scribd
Upload
12 views

Lecture 12 Design Rules

The document discusses different types of design rules including principles, standards, and guidelines that provide direction for designing user interfaces. It outlines principles of learnability, flexibility, and robustness that support usability. Examples of standards and guidelines like Nielsen's heuristics are also provided. The goal is to capture reusable design knowledge through patterns to help maximize usability.

Uploaded by

Prashanth
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
12 views

Lecture 12 Design Rules

The document discusses different types of design rules including principles, standards, and guidelines that provide direction for designing user interfaces. It outlines principles of learnability, flexibility, and robustness that support usability. Examples of standards and guidelines like Nielsen's heuristics are also provided. The goal is to capture reusable design knowledge through patterns to help maximize usability.

Uploaded by

Prashanth
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 17

chapter 7

design rules

1
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

2
types of design rules

• principles
– abstract design rules
– low authority

increasing generality
– high generality Guidelines

increasing generality
• standards
– specific design rules
– high authority
Standards
– limited application
• guidelines
– lower authority increasing authority
increasing authority
– more general application

3
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 goal-
directed behaviour

4
Principles of learnability
Predictability – users don’t like surprises (exception games and then only a
few)
– determining effect of future actions based on past interaction history
– operation visibility

Synthesizability – requires user to have a mental model (chap 1)


– assessing the effect of past actions
– immediate vs. eventual honesty – changing wysisyg doc vrs updating web pages

Familiarity
– how prior knowledge applies to new system
– guessability; affordance

Generalizability
– extending specific interaction knowledge to new situations

Consistency
– likeness in input/output behaviour arising from similar situations or task
objectives

5
Principles of flexibility
Dialogue initiative – system and users in a conversation
– freedom from system imposed constraints on input dialogue
– system vs. user pre-emptiveness
– understanding of main use-cases

Multithreading
– ability of system to support user interaction for more than one task at a time
– concurrent vs. interleaving
– multimodality – button click / alt + / menu item

Task migratability
– passing responsibility for task execution between user and system
– ultimate user control

Substitutivity
– allowing equivalent values of input and output to be substituted for each other
– representation multiplicity (graph/values)
– equal opportunity (define line by drawing or specifying length/position)

Customizability
– modifiability of the user interface by user (adaptability) or system (adaptivity)

6
Principles of robustness
Observability
– ability of user to evaluate the internal state of the system from its
perceivable representation
– browsability; defaults; reachability; persistence; operation visibility

Recoverability
– ability of user to take corrective action once an error has been recognized
– reachability; forward/backward recovery; commensurate effort

Responsiveness
– how the user perceives the rate of communication with the system
– Stability

Task conformance
– degree to which system services support all of the user's tasks
– task completeness; task adequacy

7
Standards
• set by national or international bodies to ensure
compliance by a large community of designers
standards require sound underlying theory and slowly
changing technology
– many large organisations have their own standards

• hardware standards more common than software high


authority and low level of detail

• ISO 9241 defines usability as effectiveness, efficiency


and satisfaction with which users accomplish tasks

• There are also some ISO standards for usability


reporting

8
Guidelines

• 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

9
Golden rules and heuristics

• “Broad brush” design rules


• Useful check list for good design
• Better design using these than using nothing!
• Different collections e.g.
– Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics (see Chapter 9)
– Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules
– Norman’s 7 Principles

10
Nielsen’s 10 Usability 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
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and
recover from errors
10. Help and documentation
11
Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules

1. Strive for consistency


2. Enable frequent users to use
shortcuts
3. Offer informative feedback
4. Design dialogs to yield closure
5. Offer error prevention and simple
error handling
6. Permit easy reversal of actions
7. Support internal locus of control
8. Reduce short-term memory load

12
Norman’s 7 Principles

1. Use both knowledge in the world and


knowledge in the head.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks.
3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of
Execution and Evaluation.
4. Get the mappings right.
5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural
and artificial.
6. Design for error.
7. When all else fails, standardize.
13
Web Guidelines

• The W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines are


a really good, very practical guide to
usability
• If you follow these guidelines your system
will be good, not only for visually impaired
users, but for all users
• Furthermore most of the guidelines apply
to all systems, not just web systems
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/

14
HCI design patterns

• An approach to reusing knowledge about


successful design solutions
• Originated in architecture: Alexander
• A pattern is an invariant solution to a recurrent
problem within a specific context.
• Examples
– Light on Two Sides of Every Room (architecture)
– Go back to a safe place (HCI)
• Patterns do not exist in isolation but are linked
to other patterns in languages which enable
complete designs to be generated
15
HCI design patterns (cont.)
• Characteristics of patterns
– capture design practice not theory
– capture the essential common properties of good
examples of design
– represent design knowledge at varying levels: social,
organisational, conceptual, detailed
– embody values and can express what is humane in
interface design
– are intuitive and readable and can therefore be used
for communication between all stakeholders
– a pattern language should be generative and assist
in the development of complete designs.
• Start point for more info
– http://www.hcipatterns.org/tiki-index.php
16
Summary & Exercise
Exercise
– Match Nielsen/ Shneiderman/Norman lists to earlier
principles

Principles for usability


– repeatable design for usability relies on maximizing benefit
of one good design by abstracting out the general
properties which can direct purposeful design
– The success of designing for usability requires both
creative insight (new paradigms) and purposeful principled
practice

Using design rules


– standards and guidelines to direct design activity

17

You might also like