1 / 0

User Interface Design

Designing a system which the user is happy to be using. User Interface Design. Why is User Interface Design important?. Because badly designed products cause grief and frustration to users Not limited to software (e.g. old Llandinam Doors ). Why is User Interface Design important?.

adanna
Download Presentation

User Interface Design

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Designing a system which the user is happy to be using User Interface Design
  2. User Interface Design Why is User Interface Design important? Because badly designed products cause grief and frustration to users Not limited to software (e.g. old Llandinam Doors )
  3. User Interface Design
  4. User Interface Design
  5. User Interface Design
  6. User Interface Design Why is User Interface Design important? Because badly designed products cause grief and frustration to users Not limited to software (e.g. Llandinam Doors ) Often worse in software - and users often blame themselves Some examples…
  7. User Interface Design Offering stupid choices In this mail program, if there are no deleted messages, then it offers to delete some for you - what happens if you say YES?
  8. User Interface Design Bad ways of doing things If you select Set Time in the top window, you get the dialog below. There are standard ways of entering times, but they have chosen a way so different that they have to tell people how to do it.
  9. User Interface Design Giving the wrong message Who knows “Who’s where”? In this application, you can tell it whether you are in or out. This is “OUT”….
  10. User Interface Design Ask the impossible! Click the Next button - you can’t!
  11. User Interface Design Overwhelm the user Far too many choices - can’t see the wood for the trees. The selections could be rationalised into a smaller number of related areas.
  12. User Interface Design Useless error messages “Unexpected error” is used surprisingly often - even worse than “Internal Error” GeekSpeak - useful only to the software authors - even then it’s not detailed enough
  13. User Interface Design Aggressive error messages How about, “Some fields in the record have not been filled in. Are you sure you wish to close the record?” (with Yes/No)
  14. User Interface Design Messages that waste the user’s time Fair enough - but I can see that these things have happened. A waste of a mouse click on the OK button. If such messages are deemed necessary, they could be displayed on a status bar.
  15. User Interface Design What should you worry about when building user interfaces? Make clear to the user what they can/should do Try to make screen(s) uncluttered Standardise on how things are done Give sensible error messages Try the system out on example users Emphasis on adapting the system, not the user
  16. User Interface Design Use Standards (Often OS related) “Real estate” Menu structure Keyboard shortcuts Primitives e.g. File chooser
  17. User Interface Design Use metaphors and modes Relate the tasks to the real world Be clear about what “state” the system is in
  18. User Interface Design Typical steps User analysis Classes or user Typical tasks System prototyping Interface evaluation
  19. User Interface Design Identifying scenarios How do you do it? Start from the requirements What might be a typical set of actions that the user might do? What might happen when they do them - exceptions, alarms, etc. List each of them out UML calls this “USE CASES”
  20. User Interface Design Deciding what system needs to do/show during scenarios For each step of each scenario: What information does the user need? What choices does the user need to be able to make? What kinds of ways might the information be presented?
  21. User Interface Design Prototyping Doesn’t need to be code (Better NOT being code - at least at first) (Unless IDE) Much less effort to produce sketches and descriptions Get quicker turnaround in ideas (compare with planning a film)
  22. User Interface Design What kinds of user interface prototypes might help evaluation? Sketches - hand produced drawings of what the screen might look like Screen drawings - more realistic screen shots, using a drawing package or software Animated sets of screens - buttons show how screens fit together, but no active functionality
  23. User Interface Design How do you evaluate it? Ideally you would have a set of typical users, you could talk them through the scenario and let them see on your prototype how it works Probably only have your project team, so have to try it on them
  24. User Interface Design Learn more about it If you end up doing a lot of user interface work, there are some excellent books in this area: Sommerville has a useful chapter on user interface design Don Norman: Psychology of everyday things. Basic Books 1988. (also in paperback as Design of everyday things, 1998) Ben Shneiderman, Designing the user interface, 3rd edition, Addison Wesley, 1998. (look on Amazon - Shneiderman 3rd for 1p; Sommerville 6th for £3)
  25. User Interface Design The end... … until next semester and CS22310
More Related