All Annotations of AskTog: First Principles of Interaction Design[Preview]

saved by38 people, first byAlex Ilyin on 2006-05-22, last byadan waters on 2008-08-03

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  Effective interfaces are visually apparent and forgiving, instilling in their users a sense of control. Users quickly see the breadth of their options, grasp how to achieve their goals, and do their work.

  
  

  Effective interfaces do not concern the user with the inner workings of the system. Work is carefully and continuously saved, with full option for the user to undo any activity at any time.

  
  

  Effective applications and services perform a maximum of work, while requiring a minimum of information from users.

• Anticipation

  
  
  
  
  

  Applications should attempt to anticipate the user’s wants and needs.

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  Autonomy

• an environment that is neither confining nor infinite
• No autonomy can exist in the absence of control, and control cannot be exerted in the absence of sufficient information
• Users should not have to seek out status information. Rather, they should be able to glance at their work environment and be able to gather at least a first approximation of state and workload.
• Color Blindness
• Secondary cues can consist of anything from the subtlety of gray scale differentiation to having a different graphic or different text label associated with each color presented.
• Autonomy
• Consistency
• • Interpretation of user behavior, e. g., shortcut keys maintain their meanings.
    
  • Invisible structures.
    
  • Small visible structures.
    
  • The overall "look" of a single application or service--splash screens, design elements.
    
  • A suite of products.
    
  • In-house consistency.
    
  • Platform-consistency.
• The only way to ascertain user expectations is to do user testing. No amount of study and debate will substitute.
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  Defaults

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • Defaults should be easy to "blow away:"
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  Efficiency of the User

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • Look at the user's productivity, not the computer's.
    
  
  
  

• Efficiency of the User
• Fitts' Law
• The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
• Human Interface Objects
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  Latency Reduction

• Latency Reduction
• Latency can often be hidden from users through multi-tasking techniques
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  Learnability

  
  
  

• Learnability

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Ideally, products would have no learning curve
• Metaphors, Use of
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  Protect Users' Work

• Readability
• Since, typically, the highest expense in a business is labor cost. Any time the
  user must wait for the system to respond before they can proceed, money is being
  lost.
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  • Give users well-marked roads and landmarks, then let them shift into
    four-wheel drive.
  
  
  

  Mimic the safety, smoothness, and consistency of the natural landscape. Don’t
  trap users into a single path through a service, but do offer them a line of
  least resistance. This lets the new user and the user who just wants to get the
  job done in the quickest way possible and "no-brainer" way through, while still
  enabling those who want to explore and play what-if a means to wander farther
  afield.

• The World Wide Web, for all its pretty screens and fancy buttons, is, in effect,
  an invisible navigation space. True, you can always see the specific page you
  are on, but you cannot see anything of the vast space between pages. Once users
  reach our applications, we must take care to reduce navigation to a minimum and
  make that navigation that is left clear and natural. Present the illusion that
  users are always in the same place, with the work brought to them. This not only
  eliminates the need for maps and other navigational aids, it offers users a
  greater sense of mastery and autonomy.

• Early software tended to make it difficult to leave. With the advent of the
  web, we've seen the advent of software that makes it difficult to stay. Web
  browsers still festoon their windows with objects and options that have nothing
  to do with our applications and services running within. Our task can become
  akin to designing a word process which, oh, by the way, will be using
  Photoshop's menu bar. Having 49 options on the screen that lead directly to
  destruction of the user's work, along with one or two that just might help is
  not an explorable interface, it is the interface from hell. If you are working
  with complex transactions using a standard web browser, turn off the menu bar
  and all of the other irrelevant options, then supply our own landmarks and
  options.

• Ensure that users never lose their work as a result of error on their part, the
  vagaries of Internet transmission, or any other reason other than the completely
  unavoidable, such as sudden loss of power to the client computer.
• Use large objects for important functions (Big buttons are faster).
• Trap multiple clicks of the same button or object. Because the Internet is slow,
  people tend to press the same button repeatedly, causing things to be even
  slower.

• Ideally, products would have no learning curve: users would walk up to them
  for the very first time and achieve instant mastery. In practice, all
  applications and services, no matter how simple, will display a learning
  curve.

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  Fitts' Law

  
  
  
  
  
  
  • The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to
    and size of the target.
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  • Sometimes, however, you have to provide deep ruts.
  
  
  

  The closer you get to the naive end of the experience curve, the more you
  have to rein in your users. A single-use application for accomplishing an
  unknown task requires a far more directive interface than a habitual-use
  interface for experts.

  
  
  
  
  • Offer users stable perceptual cues for a sense of "home."
  
  
  

  Stable visual elements not only enable people to navigate fast, they act as
  dependable landmarks, giving people a sense of "home."

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  • Make it faster
  
  
  

  Eliminate any element of the application that is not helping. Be
  ruthless.

• on 2006-08-14 Mitch_h
  Bruce Tognazzini's collection of principles for good UI design