9 principles of GUI Design (Article 1) and 9 principles of gui Design (Article 1)

9 principles of GUI Design (Article 1) and 9 principles of gui Design (Article 1)

Basic Principle 1: Focus on users and their tasks, rather than technology
Basic Principle 2: first consider the function and then represent
Basic Principle 3: Consistent with users' views on tasks
Basic Principle 4: The design must comply with common conditions
Basic Principle 5: do not distract users from their goals
Basic Principle 6: Promote Learning
Basic Principle 7: transfer information, not just data
Basic Principle 8: The design should meet the response needs
Basic Principle 9: discover an error through a user trial and fix it

1) Principle 1: Focus on users and their tasks, rather than technology
This is the most important principle, the foundation of all principles, and the basis of all other user interface design principles.
What does "Focus on users and their tasks" mean? It means that you will answer the following questions as the beginning of a development project:

• Who is this software designed? Who is the target user? Who are the target customers (not necessarily users )?
• What does this software do? What behavior does it intend to support? What problems does it help users solve? What value does it provide?
• What are the problems with the target users? For how they work now. What do they like or dislike?
• What skills and knowledge do target users have? Are they motivated to learn? How to Learn? Are there different types of users with different skills, knowledge, and motivation?
• How do users master the concept of data to be managed by software?
• What kind of work methods do target users prefer? How can the software meet those requirements? How will they be affected?

2) Principle 2: first consider the function and then represent
It should be noted that the first consideration of features does not mean that "the first step is to design and implement features. Then focus on the user interface ". Many developers use this misunderstanding. This method rarely develops successful software.
The user interface of the software application is not just the appearance of the software. It also reflects some design decisions that go deep into the architecture. For example, you can tell users what concepts, structure of information, backend functions, and customization capabilities. Therefore, you cannot simply assert whether the user interface is successful or not at the implementation end.
Principle 2 should be understood in this way: Software Applications reflect specific concepts and relationships between concepts. Designers should fully define concepts and their relationships before designing how to present them to users.
More specifically: Do not jump to the GUI layout from the beginning. Developers can draw screen sketches, select and layout controls, crop foam prototypes, or write code. First, answer the task-related questions given in principle 1 carefully, and then answer the following questions:

• What concepts does this software show to users? Are they concepts that users need to recognize from the task field? Or is it a new concept? If they are new concepts, can they be expressed as extensions of common concepts? Or are they external concepts introduced from computer science?
• What data will the user use to create, view, or operate on? What information does the user extract from the data? How to extract? What steps will they use? Where is the data that the user inputs to the software from and where is the data generated from the software used?
• What options, options, settings, and controls does this application provide? This is not a question about how to represent controls (such as single-choice buttons, menus, and scroll bars), but about their functions, goals, and roles in the software (such, weekly workday, USD, email address, volume ). This is a question about the options provided by the software.

3) Principle 3: Consistent with users' views on tasks
The user interface of the software should be designed from the user's perspective. If developers do not know what their opinions are, they cannot design them. The best way to discover a user's point of view is to follow basic principle 1: Talk to representative users, observe their work, and collaborate with them. This completes task analysis. There are several guidelines for designing based on the user's point of view.
3.1 unnatural exclusion
Unnatural behavior means that the operations performed by the user are not clearly related to their goals. Software that allows users to execute unnatural operations is relatively fragmented, inintuitive, and unprofessional, because unnatural behaviors are difficult to learn but easy to learn, time-consuming, and annoying.
3.2 use users' vocabulary instead of yours
When writing text for software or its documents, avoid computer slang. As described in basic principle 3, we should create a project dictionary. The dictionary should be named for each concept (object, operation, or attribute) that you will see. The terms in the dictionary should match the idioms used in the task field. Once a dictionary is developed. The text in the software or document should strictly abide by the dictionary.
3.3 let the internal content of the program be processed inside the program
Software users are not interested in how the software runs. They just want to achieve their goals. Therefore, the internal work details of the software should be kept inside, so that users cannot see or think of it. This sounds unreasonable, but in fact exposing the software to users is a very common user interface taboo.
So far, we have learned that the conceptual model should be developed before the user interface is designed. The conceptual model specifies which concepts are made public to users. The user interface of the application should show only the concepts that are required to support the target task, while hiding all other concepts. Including general concepts of computer terms and concepts that only belong to implementation.
3.4 find the correct balance between functions and complexity
Software developers face the problem of finding the optimal balance between functionality and complexity. To achieve this, developers must talk to representative users and observe them. Some of the users may even be invited to the design team. Otherwise, developers are just guessing.
Once developers know how many features a user needs, they can use the following design technologies to reduce complexity:

• Appropriate default value: Make sure that each setting in the application has a default value. Users should be able to retain all or most of the settings as their default values and still get a reasonable result. This allows you to ignore most settings for most of the time.
• Template or encapsulated solution: instead of starting from scratch for each task, it provides users with partial or complete solutions for selection, users can modify these schemes to meet their specific purposes. This method allows users to bypass the functions of most software. You don't even need to know how to generate results from scratch to get useful results.
• Disruptive path and Wizard: new users often want someone to guide them through the steps of complex tasks. The application can meet this requirement by providing a "Wizard", that is, providing a predefined step sequence to guide the user to complete the complex process step by step, in this process, you can specify clear commands and choices through menus rather than text fields. No matter what help the wizard provides, the Wizard is an excellent way to simplify the complexity.
• Progressive display: the details and complexity are hidden unless required by the user. The control is activated or the menu bar menu is displayed until the control and menu bar are associated with the current transaction. Hide the rarely used settings or controls that require advanced software knowledge under the panel marked as "details" or "advanced. You can use the combination of multiple settings instead of all individual settings. For example, the Section style in the document editor allows you to define a set of formatting attributes. It is also applied to all text paragraphs.
• Common commands: Use a small number of command sets to manipulate all types of data. Reduce the number of required commands by using a carefully selected set of common commands (which corresponds to all types of data in the application. Most of the operations that people use on computers can be expressed by nine Common commands: Create, Open, Move, Copy, Save, Print, Show/Edit Properties, and Follow Link. As described in basic principle 2, a conceptual model can be developed to show what operations are common to each object, and then General commands are used to provide these operations.
• Task-specific design: provides good support for a small task set. Do not provide users with a collection of small private programs. Each program supports a task very well.
• Customization: allows you to customize user interfaces so that customers can adjust them to highlight the features they need without highlighting or hiding other features. Allows users (or local developers) to set default values and define macros. Create templates or customize software based on their specific needs.

Let's take a look at the future.

9 principles of GUI Design (Article 2 ):
Http://blog.csdn.net/sanqima/article/details/45601815
9 principles of GUI Design (Article 3 ):
Http://blog.csdn.net/sanqima/article/details/45602855