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Lec5-Usability Principles: Muhammad Hanif

This document discusses several usability principles for designing interfaces: - Visibility principles like making controls obvious and relevant parts visible. An example of poor visibility is a confusing elevator control panel. - Feedback principles like providing indications of actions being taken within 5 seconds. - Constraint principles like restricting incorrect options through physical, logical, or cultural constraints. - Consistency principles like having similar operations and elements for similar tasks across applications. - Affordance principles like designing elements that invite intuitive use through their appearance. Usability is important for user productivity, and heuristics provide guidance in applying principles during design.

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49 views31 pages

Lec5-Usability Principles: Muhammad Hanif

This document discusses several usability principles for designing interfaces: - Visibility principles like making controls obvious and relevant parts visible. An example of poor visibility is a confusing elevator control panel. - Feedback principles like providing indications of actions being taken within 5 seconds. - Constraint principles like restricting incorrect options through physical, logical, or cultural constraints. - Consistency principles like having similar operations and elements for similar tasks across applications. - Affordance principles like designing elements that invite intuitive use through their appearance. Usability is important for user productivity, and heuristics provide guidance in applying principles during design.

Uploaded by

arslan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Lec5-Usability Principles

Muhammad Hanif
Design and Usability Principles

 The do’s and don’ts of interaction design

 What to provide and what not to provide at the interface

 Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge,


experience and common-sense
Dr. Donald Norman’s Book
Visibility

 To make what needs to be done obvious.


 To make relevant parts visible/clear.
 Example:
Controls of a Car
Poor Visibility Example

 This is a control panel for an elevator.


 How does it work?
 Push a button for the floor you want?
 Nothing happens!
 Push any other button? Still nothing
 What do you need to do????
 It is not visible as to what to do!
Feedback

 Feedback is about sending back information about what


action has been done and what has been accomplished,
allowing the person to continue with the activity.
 Includes sound, highlighting, animation and combinations
of these
 Design Rule: If an operation requires more than 5 sec,
provide Feedback.
Constraints

 Restricting the possible actions that can be performed


 Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options
 Example:
Disabled menu options
Constraints

 Physical
 Logical
 Cultural
Physical Constraints

 Refer to the way physical objects restrict the movement


of things

 Only one way you can insert a key into a lock,


Vertical/Horizontal scrollbars

 How many ways can you insert a CD or DVD disk into a


computer?
Logical Constraints

 Use people’s everyday common sense reasoning about the


way the world works

 Example:
Disable menu options
Logical or Ambiguous Design?

 Where do you plug the


mouse?

 Where do you plug the


keyboard?

 Do the Color coded icons


help?
Logical Designs

 A. provides direct
adjacent mapping
between icon and
connector
 B. provides color coding
to associate the
connectors with the labels
Cultural Constraints

 Learned arbitrary conventions


 Red triangles for warning
 Smiley face for happiness
 Can be universal or culturally specific
 Once learned and culturally accepted, become universal
Mapping

 Relationship between controls and their effect in the


world.
Which is most natural?
Which control go with which burner?
Is this a better design?
Consistency

 To have similar operations and use similar elements for


similar tasks
 Example:
–Always use ctrl key plus first initial of the command for
an operation –ctrl+C, ctrl+V, ctrl+S
 Benefit:
 Consistent interfaces are easier to learnand use.
When consistency breaks down!

 What happens if there is more than one command starting


with the same letter?
 e.g. save, spelling, select, style
 Have to find other initials or combinations of keys,
thereby breaking the consistency rule
 e.g. ctrl+S, ctrl+Sp, ctrl+shift+L
 Increases learning burden on user, making them more
prone to errors.
Internal and External Consistency

 Internal Consistency refers to designing operations to


behave the same within an application
 –Difficult to achieve with complex interfaces

 External Consistency refers to designing operations and


interfaces to be the same across applications and devices
External Consistency
Keypad Numbers Layout
Affordance

 An attribute of an object that allows people to know how


to use it.
 Examples:
 –a mouse button invites pushing
 –a door handle affords pulling
 –a scrollbar affords moving up and down
 –An icon affords clicking on
Activity
Virtual Affordance

 How do the following screen objects afford?


 What if you were a novice user?
 Would you know what to do with them?
Heuristics and usability principles

 When design principles are used in practice they are


commonly referred to as heuristics.
 This term emphasizes that something has to be done
with them when they are applied to a given problem.
 In particular, they need to be interpreted in the design
context, drawing on past experience of, for example, how
to design feedback and what it means for something to be
consistent.
Heuristics and usability principles

 Another form of guidance is usability principles.


 An example is "speak the user's language."
 These are quite similar to design principles, except that
they tend to be more prescriptive.
 In addition, whereas design principles tend to be used
mainly for informing a design, usability principles are used
mostly as the basis for evaluating prototypes and existing
systems.
10 Usability Principles
Below are the ten main usability principles, developed by Nielsen (2001) and his
colleagues.
1. Visibility of system status-always keep users informed about what is going on,
through providing appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
2. Match between system and the real world-speak the users' language, using words,
phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system oriented terms.
3. User control and freedom-provide ways of allowing users to easily escape from
places they unexpectedly find themselves.
4. Consistency and standards-avoid making users wonder whether different words,
situations, or actions mean the same thing.
10 Usability Principles
5. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors-use plain language to
describe the nature of the problem and suggest a way of solving it.
6. error prevention-where possible prevent errors occurring in the first place.
7. Recognition rather than recall-make objects, actions, and options visible.
8. Flexibility and efficiency of use-provide accelerators that are invisible to novice
users, but allow more experienced users to carry out tasks more quickly.
9. Aesthetic design-avoid using information that is irrelevant or rarely needed.
10. Help and documentation-provide information that can be easily searched and
provides help in a set of concrete steps that can easily be followed.
Conclusion

 User Productivity=

Functionality(what the system can do)


*
Usability(what user can do with the system)

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