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By Dr. Sandhya N dept.

of CSE DSATM 1

USER INTERFACE
DESIGN

Text Book

Wilbert O. Galitz, “The Essential Guide to User Interface


Design”, John Wiley & Sons, Second Edition 2002.

Chapters: Part1: 1,2, Part2: step1,2,4,5,6,7,14


By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 2

Module 2
Text Book: Part 2: Step 1 & 2
The User Interface Design process- Obstacles, Usability,
Human characteristics in Design, Human Interaction
speeds, Business functions-Business definition and
requirement analysis, Basic business functions, Design
standards.
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 3

Part 2:
• Obstacles and pitfalls* in the development path
• Designing for people: The five commandments*
• Usability
• Usability Assessment in the design process
• Common Usability Problems*
• Some Practical Measures of Usability
• Some Objective Measures of Usability
• The design Team
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Obstacles and pitfalls in the development path


Obstacles

• Nobody ever gets it right the first time.


• Development is chock-full of surprises.
• Good design requires living in a sea of changes.
• Making contracts to ignore change will never eliminate the
need for change.
• Even if you have made the best system humanly possible,
people will still make mistakes when using it.
• Designers need good tools.
• You must have behavioral design goals like performance
design goals.
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Pitfalls
(Answer to Assignment Qno12 slide no 5)
• No early analysis and understanding of the user’s needs
and expectations.
• A focus on using design features or components that are
“neat” or “glitzy.”
• Little or no creation of design element prototypes.
• No usability testing.
• No common design team vision of user interface design
goals.
• Poor communication between members of the development
team.
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Designing for People: The Five Commandments


(Answer to Assignment Qno7b slide no 6)

• Gain a complete understanding of users and their tasks.


• Solicit early and ongoing user involvement.
• Perform rapid prototyping and testing.
• Modify and iterate the design as much as necessary.
• Integrate the design of all the system components.
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Usability
Usability is the capability to be used by humans easily and
effectively. where,
easily = to a specified level of subjective assessment. effectively = to
a specified level of human performance.

Usability Assessment in the Design Process


Common usability problems in GUI:
1. Ambiguous menus and icons.
2. Languages that permit only single-direction movement through a
system.
3. Input and direct manipulation limits.
4. Highlighting and selection limitations.
5. Unclear step sequences.
6. More steps to manage the interface than to perform tasks.
7. Complex linkage between and within applications.
8. Inadequate feedback and confirmation.
9. Lack of system anticipation and intelligence.
10. Inadequate error messages, help, tutorials, and documentation.
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 8

Common usability problems in Web:


(Answer to Assignment Qno10 slide no 8 explain any 8)

1. Visual Clutter
2. Impaired information readability
3. Incomprehensible components
4. Annoying distractions
5. Confusion navigation
6. Inefficient navigation
7. Inefficient operations
8. Excessive or inefficient page scrolling
9. Information overload
10. Design inconsistency
11. Outdated information
12. Stale design caused by emulation of printed documents and past
systems
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Some practical measures of Usability

• Are people asking a lot of questions or often reaching for


a manual?
• Are frequent exasperation responses heard?
• Are there many irrelevant actions being performed?
• Are there many things to ignore?
• Do a number of people want to use the product?
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 10

Some objective measures of Usability


How effective is the interface? Can the required range of tasks be
accomplished:
• At better than some required level of performance (for example, in
terms of speed and errors)?
• By some required percentage of the specified target range of users?
• Within some required proportion of the range of usage environments?
How learnable is the interface? Can the interface be learned:
• Within some specified time from commissioning and start of user
training?
• Based on some specified amount of training and user support?
• Within some specified relearning time each time for intermittent
users?
How flexible is the interface? Is it flexible enough to:
• Allow some specified percentage variation in tasks and/or
environments beyond those first specified?
What are the attitudes of the users? Are they:
• Within acceptable levels of human cost in terms of tiredness,
discomfort, frustration, and personal effort?
• Such that satisfaction causes continued and enhanced usage of the
system?
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 11

The Design Team


Provide a balanced design team, including specialists in:

• Development
• Human factors
• Visual design
• Usability assessment
• Documentation
• Training
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Step 1: Know your user or client

To create a usable system, the designer must always do


the following:

• Understanding how people interact with computers


• Important Human Characteristics in design**
• Human considerations in design
• Human Interaction speeds
• Performance vs preference
• Methods for gaining an understanding of Users
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Understanding how people interact with


computers
Why People Have Trouble with Computers?
• Use of jargon(strange language)
• Non-obvious design.
• Fine distinctions
• Disparity in problem-solving strategies
• Design inconsistency
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Responses to Poor Design

Psychological Physical
• Confusion • Abandonment of the system
• Annoyance
• Partial use of the system
• Indirect use of the system
• Frustration
• Modification of the task
• Panic or stress • Compensatory activity
• Boredom • Misuse of the system
• Direct programming
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 15
Important Human Characteristics in Design (Answer
key Assignment Qno. 9 and 13 explain using textbook
any 5)
• Perception
• Memory
• Sensory storage
• Visual Acuity
• Foveal and Peripheral Vision
• Information Processing
• Mental Models
• Movement Control
• Learning
• Skill
• Individual differences
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 16

Human considerations in Design


• The User’s Knowledge and Experience
• The User’s Tasks and Needs
• The User’s Psychological Characteristics
• The User’s Physical Characteristics
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 17

The User’s Knowledge and Experience


(Answer to Assignment Qno11 slide no 17)
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 18

The User’s Tasks and Needs


(Answer to Assignment Qno8 slide no 18 )
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 19

The User’s Psychological Characteristics


By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 20

The User’s Physical Characteristics


By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 21

Human Interaction speeds


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Performance vs Preference

People usually prefer an interface design feature that


actually yields poorer performance.
Ex: pointing with a mouse or cursor, alternative menu
interaction techniques, use of color, two-dimensional
versus three-dimensional displays

People are unaware of the many human mechanisms


responsible for the speed and accuracy of human-
computer interaction.

Ideally, in design, always augment preferences with


performance measures and try to achieve an optimized
solution.
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 23

Methods for gaining an understanding of


Users
• Visit user locations, particularly if they are unfamiliar
• Talk with users about their problems, difficulties, wishes,
• Establish direct contact; avoid relying on intermediaries.
• Videotape users working or performing a task to illustrate and study
problems and difficulties.
• Learn about the work organization where the system may be
installed.
• Have users think aloud as they do something to uncover details that
may not otherwise be solicited.
• Try the job yourself. It may expose difficulties that are not known, or
expressed, by users.
• Prepare surveys and questionnaires to obtain a larger sample of user
opinions.
• Establish testable behavioral target goals to give management a
measure for what progress has been made and what is still required.
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 24

Step 2: Understand the business function

• Business definition and requirements analysis**


• Determining Basic Business Functions*
• Design Standards or style Guides*
• System training and Documentation needs
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 25

Business definition and requirements analysis**


(Answer key for Assignment Qno. 15 slides 25-26)
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 26
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 27

Answer key for Assignment Qno. 14 slides 27 and 28


By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 28
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 29

Determining Basic Business Functions*


(Answer key for Assignment Qno. 16 slides 29 and 33)
A detailed description of what the product will do is
prepared. Major system functions are listed and described,
including critical system inputs and outputs. A flowchart of
major functions is developed.
The process the developer will use is summarized as
follows:
• Gain a complete understanding of the user’s mental
model based upon:
• The user’s needs and the user’s profile.
• A user task analysis.
• Develop a conceptual model of the system based upon
the user’s mental model. This includes:
• Defining objects.
• Developing metaphors.
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 30

Understanding the User’s Mental Model


Mental models enable a person to predict the actions necessary to do
things if the actions have been forgotten or have not yet been
encountered.

Performing a Task Analysis


User activities are precisely described in a task analysis.
• One result of a task analysis is a listing of the user’s current tasks.
• Another result is a list of objects the users see as important to what they
do.

The objects can be sorted into the following categories:


Concrete objects—things that can be touched.
People who are the object of sentences—normally organization
employees, customers, for example.
Forms or journals—things that keep track of information.
People who are the subject of sentences—normally the users of a system.
Abstract objects—anything not included above.
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 31

Developing Conceptual Models


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By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 34

Design Standards or Style Guides*


Value of Standards and Guidelines

Valuable to users because the standards and guidelines:


• Allow faster performance.
• Reduce errors.
• Reduce training time.
• Foster better system utilization.
• Improve satisfaction.
• Improve system acceptance
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 35

Valuable to system developers because they:

• Increase visibility of the human-computer interface.


• Simplify design.
• Provide more programming and design aids, reducing programming
time.
• Reduce redundant effort.
• Reduce training time.
• Provide a benchmark for quality control testing.
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 36

Business System Interface Standards and Guidelines


Unfortunately, past research on guideline utilization in business
systems has hardly been encouraging. Standards conformance
problems identified include difficulties in finding information being
sought, difficulties in interpreting information, and numerous rules
violations.

Rules were not adhered to, however, for the following reasons:
• An alternative design solution was better than that mandated by the
standard.
• Available development tools did not allow compliance with the
standard.
• Compliance with the standard was planned, but time was not yet
available to implement it.
• The rule that was broken was not known or was overlooked.
By Dr. Sandhya N dept. of CSE DSATM 37

Web Guidelines and Style Guides


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System training and Documentation needs

System training will be based on user needs, system


conceptual design, system learning goals, and system
performance goals. Training may include such tools as
formal or video training, manuals, online tutorials, reference
manuals, quick reference guides, and online help.

System documentation is a reference point, a form of


communication, and a more concrete design—words that
can be seen and understood. Creating documentation
during the development progress will uncover issues and
reveal omissions that might not otherwise be detected until
later in the design process.

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