Eight features required for a good user interface

English Original:
http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/04/15/8-characteristics-of-successful-user-interfaces/

When you build your user interface and Web site, there are a variety of information about the methods and patterns of interface design You can use, solutions to common problems, and general usability advice. The guidelines given by the following experts may lead you to create a good user interface, but what is a good interface? What are the features that a valuable user interface should have?

The following eight features are what I think is necessary for a good user interface:

• Clear
• Concise
• Familiar with
• Easy to respond
• Consistent
• Attraction
• Efficient
• Tolerance

Let's take a closer look at each of the features:

1. Clear

Sharpness is the most important element of user interface design. In fact, all the purpose of user interface design is to enable people to interact with your system through communication and functionality. If people don't know how your application works or where they should go on your site, they will be confused and frustrated.

What is this? When the mouse moves to the WordPress button, the ToolTip pops up to explain its function.

2. Concise Concise

A clear user interface is fine, but you should be careful not to get bogged down in excessive clarity. Definitions and explanations are easy to add, but you do so at the same time increase the size. The size of your interface increases. By adding too many explanations, your users will have to spend too much time reading them.

Not only to keep it clear, but also to keep it simple. Don't use three words when you can explain a function in one sentence. When you can mark an item with a single word, don't use two. Keeping it simple can save you valuable time for your users. While it is not easy to stay clear and concise, it takes time and effort to achieve it, but the rewards are worth it.

Use two small icons in the volume control of OS X to display the volume from low to high.

3. Familiar is familiar with

Many designers are trying to make their own interface intuitive. But what exactly is the real meaning of intuition? Intuitive means that you can naturally, instinctively understand and comprehend. But how can you be intuitive? You can achieve it by becoming familiar with it.

Familiarity is similar to what you have encountered before. When you are familiar with something, you know how it is done-you know what will happen. Find out what your users are familiar with and integrate them into your user interface.

Goplan tab-page interface. Tags are familiar because they mimic the labels on the folder. You know clearly click on the tab you will browse the section and other places the label will continue to exist for further navigation.

4. Responsive easy to respond

The easy response means two things. First, easy response means fast. If there is no software in the background, the interface should respond quickly. Waiting to load and slow interface is frustrating. It looks like it's loaded quickly, but it's the interface that quickly loads (even if the content hasn't caught up) improves the user experience.

Easy response also means that the interface provides some form of feedback. The interface should be fed back to the user to tell them what's going on. Did you succeed in pressing the button? How will you know? button should show a pressed state feedback, perhaps the text on the button can be changed to "Loading ..." and disables the button. Is the software hung up or is the content loaded? Use a rotating wheel or display a progress bar to keep the user in the process.

Gmail will display a progress bar when you first enter your inbox. Instead of loading the page incrementally, once everything is ready, the entire page is displayed instantly.