UI Design Principles
Filed Under Iterative, UI | Posted on January 30, 2008
What are UI design principles ?
Design principles are statements of policy which help designers to make decisions during a design process. Design principles are high level guidance which require interpretation before they can be applied in real world design tasks.
The structure principle. Your design should organize the user interface purposefully, in meaningful and useful ways based on clear, consistent models that are apparent and recognizable to users, putting related things together and separating unrelated things, differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble one another. The structure principle is concerned with your overall user interface architecture.
Principle of user profiling. Know who your user is. A design that is better for a technically skilled user might not be better for a non-technical businessman or an artist. Direct contact between end-users and developers has often radically transformed the development process.
The simplicity principle. Your design should make simple, common tasks simple to do, communicating clearly and simply in the user’s own language, and providing good shortcuts that are meaningfully related to longer procedures. The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order. Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
The visibility principle. Your design should keep all needed options and materials for a given task visible without distracting the user with extraneous or redundant information. Good designs don’t overwhelm users with too many alternatives or confuse them with unneeded information. Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
The feedback principle. Your design should keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of state or condition, and errors or exceptions that are relevant and of interest to the user through clear, concise, and unambiguous language familiar to users. Each change in the behavior of the program should be accompanied by a corresponding change in the appearance of the interface. The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
The tolerance principle. Your design should be flexible and tolerant, reducing the cost of mistakes and misuse by allowing undoing and redoing, while also preventing errors wherever possible by tolerating varied inputs and sequences and by interpreting all reasonable actions reasonable. Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
The reuse principle. Your design should reuse internal and external components and behaviors, maintaining consistency with purpose rather than merely arbitrary consistency, thus reducing the need for users to rethink and remember.
Keep Text Clear. Developers often try to make textual feedback clear by adding a lot of words. However, they ultimately make the message less clear. Concise wording of text labels, user error messages, and one-line help messages is challenging.
Shortcuts for frequent users. As the frequency of use increases, so do the user’s desires to reduce the number of interactions and to increase the pace of interaction. Abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands, and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert user. The important thing about these more powerful (and more abstract) methods is that they should not be the most exposed methods of accomplishing the task.
Principle of user testing. User-interface testing, that is, the testing of user-interfaces using actual end-users, has been shown to be an extraordinarily effective technique for discovering design defects. User testing can occur at any time during the project, however, it’s often more efficient to build a mock-up or prototype of the application and test that before building the real program. It’s much easier to deal with a design defect before it’s implemented than after.
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