From Computing and Software Wiki

User Interface Standards is created by Group 6 for 2009/2010 Software Engineering 4D03 Assignment 5.

Group Members: Roshan Jesuratnam, Ashan Khan, Arturo Mata, Jaganvir Sandhu

Contents 1 Overview 2 Standards 2.1 Windows 2.1.1 Window Management 2.1.2 Dialog Boxes 2.1.3 Properties Windows 2.1.4 Common Dialogs 2.2 Asthetics 2.2.1 Sizing 2.2.2 Formatting 2.2.3 Titles and Icons 2.2.4 Fonts and Colour 2.3 Interaction 2.3.1 Shortcuts 2.3.2 Mouseovers 2.3.3 User Input 2.3.4 Keyboard 2.3.5 Pointers 2.3.6 Accessibility 2.4 Messages 2.4.1 Errors and Warnings 2.4.2 Confirmation and Notifications 2.5 Text 2.5.1 UI Text 2.5.2 Style and Tone 2.6 Commands 2.6.1 Menus 2.6.2 Toolbars 2.6.3 Ribbons 2.7 Controls 3 Principles 3.1 Ten Usability Heuristics 3.2 Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design 4 Design 5 Techniques 6 Human Factors 7 References

Overview

TALK ABOUT TRIAL AND ERROR, SIMPLICITY,ETC

NO INDUSTRY STANDARDS BUT THERE ARE HEURISTICS AS A GENERAL GUIDLINE

EACH COMPANY HAS ITS OWN STANDARD WHICH IT FOLLOWS, THIS WIKI WILL EXPLAIN THE GENERAL, COMMON THINGS AMONG THEM.SDFSDG

DIFFERENT TYPES OF USERS

CONSSISTENCY

(Use http://www.isii.com/ui_design.html)

Standards

TAKE FROM APPLE AND MICROSOFT AND MORE CRAP
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/XHIGIntro.html
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/1/9/e191fd8c-bce8-4dba-a9d5-2d4e3f3ec1d3/ux%20guide.pdf ********************
http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/r_international.htm
http://www.beta-research.com/standards.html <---GOOD RESOURCE

Windows

Window Management

Dialog Boxes

Properties Windows

Common Dialogs

Asthetics

Sizing

Formatting

Titles and Icons

Fonts and Colour

Interaction

Shortcuts

Mouseovers

User Input

Keyboard

Pointers

Accessibility

Messages

Errors and Warnings

Confirmation and Notifications

Text

UI Text

Style and Tone

Commands

Menus

Toolbars

Ribbons

Controls

Principles

These principles are in nature heuristics of interface design. They are guidelines that "should" be used in the design of interfaces, since there is no one industry standard. These general rules provide a basis to build upon for an user interface designer.

Ten Usability Heuristics

Jakob Nielsen, a user adovacate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group for enhancing user experience, outlines the following heuristics;

• Visibility of system status
• Relate system and real world
• User Control and freedom
• Consistency and standards
• Error Prevention
• Recognition rather than recall
• Flexibility and effciency of use
• Aesthetic and minimalistic design
• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
• Help and documentation

Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design

From the book Designing the User Interface, Ben Shneiderman outlines eight key rules of good interface design;

• Strive for consistency
• Enable frequent users to use shortcuts
• Offer informative feedback
• Design dialog to yield closure
• Offer simple error handling
• Permit easy reversal of actions
• Support internal locus of control
• Reduce short-term memory load

Design

(Use http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/userInterfaceDesign.html)

PUT INTERACTIPON STYLES IN HERE

Techniques

1. Tips and Techniques The following tips and techniques that I have learned over the years should prove valuable:

Consistency, consistency, consistency. I believe the most important thing you can possibly do is ensure your user interface works consistently. If you can double-click on items in one list and have something happen, then you should be able to double-click on items in any other list and have the same sort of thing happen. Put your buttons in consistent places on all your windows, use the same wording in labels and messages, and use a consistent color scheme throughout. Consistency in your user interface enables your users to build an accurate mental model of the way it works, and accurate mental models lead to lower training and support costs. Set standards and stick to them. The only way you can ensure consistency within your application is to set user interface design standards, and then stick to them. You should follow Agile Modeling (AM)’s Apply Modeling Standards practice in all aspects of software development, including user interface design. Be prepared to hold the line. When you are developing the user interface for your system you will discover that your stakeholders often have some unusual ideas as to how the user interface should be developed. You should definitely listen to these ideas but you also need to make your stakeholders aware of your corporate UI standards and the need to conform to them. Explain the rules. Your users need to know how to work with the application you built for them. When an application works consistently, it means you only have to explain the rules once. This is a lot easier than explaining in detail exactly how to use each feature in an application step-by-step. Navigation between major user interface items is important. If it is difficult to get from one screen to another, then your users will quickly become frustrated and give up. When the flow between screens matches the flow of the work the user is trying to accomplish, then your application will make sense to your users. Because different users work in different ways, your system needs to be flexible enough to support their various approaches. User interface-flow diagrams should optionally be developed to further your understanding of the flow of your user interface. Navigation within a screen is important. In Western societies, people read left to right and top to bottom. Because people are used to this, should you design screens that are also organized left to right and top to bottom when designing a user interface for people from this culture? You want to organize navigation between widgets on your screen in a manner users will find familiar to them. Word your messages and labels effectively. The text you display on your screens is a primary source of information for your users. If your text is worded poorly, then your interface will be perceived poorly by your users. Using full words and sentences, as opposed to abbreviations and codes, makes your text easier to understand. Your messages should be worded positively, imply that the user is in control, and provide insight into how to use the application properly. For example, which message do you find more appealing “You have input the wrong information” or “An account number should be eight digits in length.” Furthermore, your messages should be worded consistently and displayed in a consistent place on the screen. Although the messages “The person’s first name must be input” and “An account number should be input” are separately worded well, together they are inconsistent. In light of the first message, a better wording of the second message would be “The account number must be input” to make the two messages consistent. Understand the UI widgets. You should use the right widget for the right task, helping to increase the consistency in your application and probably making it easier to build the application in the first place. The only way you can learn how to use widgets properly is to read and understand the user-interface standards and guidelines your organization has adopted. Look at other applications with a grain of salt. Unless you know another application has been verified to follow the user interface-standards and guidelines of your organization, don’t assume the application is doing things right. Although looking at the work of others to get ideas is always a good idea, until you know how to distinguish between good user interface design and bad user interface design, you must be careful. Too many developers make the mistake of imitating the user interface of poorly designed software. Use color appropriately. Color should be used sparingly in your applications and, if you do use it, you must also use a secondary indicator. The problem is that some of your users may be color blind and if you are using color to highlight something on a screen, then you need to do something else to make it stand out if you want these people to notice it. You also want to use colors in your application consistently, so you have a common look and feel throughout your application. Follow the contrast rule. If you are going to use color in your application, you need to ensure that your screens are still readable. The best way to do this is to follow the contrast rule: Use dark text on light backgrounds and light text on dark backgrounds. Reading blue text on a white background is easy, but reading blue text on a red background is difficult. The problem is not enough contrast exists between blue and red to make it easy to read, whereas there is a lot of contrast between blue and white. Align fields effectively. When a screen has more than one editing field, you want to organize the fields in a way that is both visually appealing and efficient. I have always found the best way to do so is to left-justify edit fields: in other words, make the left-hand side of each edit field line up in a straight line, one over the other. The corresponding labels should be right-justified and placed immediately beside the field. This is a clean and efficient way to organize the fields on a screen. Expect your users to make mistakes. How many times have you accidentally deleted some text in one of your files or in the file itself? Were you able to recover from these mistakes or were you forced to redo hours, or even days, of work? The reality is that to err is human, so you should design your user interface to recover from mistakes made by your users. Justify data appropriately. For columns of data, common practice is to right-justify integers, decimal align floating-point numbers, and to left-justify strings. Your design should be intuitable. In other words, if your users don’t know how to use your software, they should be able to determine how to use it by making educated guesses. Even when the guesses are wrong, your system should provide reasonable results from which your users can readily understand and ideally learn. Don’t create busy user interfaces. Crowded screens are difficult to understand and, hence, are difficult to use. Experimental results show that the overall density of the screen should not exceed 40 percent, whereas local density within groupings should not exceed 62 percent. Group things effectively. Items that are logically connected should be grouped together on the screen to communicate they are connected, whereas items that have nothing to do with each other should be separated. You can use white space between collections of items to group them and/or you can put boxes around them to accomplish the same thing. Take an evolutionary approach. Techniques such as user interface prototyping and Agile Model Driven Development (AMDD) are critical to your success as a developer.

Human Factors

(Use http://www.beta-research.com/standards.html)

References