Performing User Interface

Design

OBJECTIVES:
GOLDEN RULES
INTERFACE ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
INTERFACE ANALYSIS
INTERFACE DESIGN STEPS
DESIGN EVALUATION
 The blueprint for a house is not complete without a representation of
doors, windows, and utility connections for water, electricity, and
telephone.
 The doors, windows and utility connections for computer software
make up the interface design.
 Interface design focuses on three areas of concern:
 The design of interfaces between software components
 The design of interfaces between the software and other nonhuman producers and
consumers of information
 The design of the interface between a human and the computer.
 User interface design creates an effective communication medium
between a human and a computer.
 Following a set of interface design principles, design identifies interface
objects and actions and then creates a screen layout that forms the
basis for user interface prototype.
 If the software is difficult to use then the user wont like it.
 The Golden Rules

The following are the golden rules stated by Theo

Mandel that must be followed during the design of
the interface.
 Place the user in control
 Reduce the user’s memory load
 Make the interface consistent.
 The golden rules: Place the user in control

 Place the user in control:

 Mandel defines a number of design principles that allow the
user to maintain control.
 Define the interaction modes in such a way that, that does not force the
user into unnecessary or undesired actions:
 The user should be able to easily enter and exit the mode with little or no
effort.
 Provide for flexible interaction:
 Different people will use different interaction mechanisms, some might use
keyboard commands, some might use mouse, some might use touch screen,
etc, Hence all interaction mechanisms should be provided.
 Allow user interaction to be interruptible and undoable:
 When a user is doing a sequence of actions the user must be able to
interrupt the sequence to do some other work without losing the work that
had been done. The user should also be able to do undo operation.
 The golden rules: Place the user in control

Streamline interaction as skill level advances and allow the

interaction to be customized:
 Advanced or highly skilled user should be provided a chance to customize
the interface as user wants which allows different interaction
mechanisms so that user doesn’t feel bored while using the same
interaction mechanism.
Hide technical internals from casual users:
 The user should not be aware of the internal technical details of the
system. He should interact with the interface just to do his work.
Design for direct interaction with objects that appear on
screen:
 The user should be able to use the objects and manipulate the objects
that are present on the screen to perform a necessary task. By this, the
user feels easy to control over the screen.
 The golden rules: reduce the user’s memory load

Reduce the user’s memory load:

Reduce demand on short-term memory:
 When users are involved in some complex tasks the demand on
short-term memory is significant. So the interface should be
designed in such a way to reduce the remembering of previously
done actions, given inputs and results.
Establish meaningful defaults:
 Always initial set of defaults should be provided to the average user,
if a user needs to add some new features then he should be able to
add the required features.
Define shortcuts that are intuitive:
 Mnemonics should be used by the user. Mnemonics means the
keyboard shortcuts to do some action on the screen.
 The golden rules: reduce the user’s memory load

The visual layout of the interface should be based on

a real-world metaphor:
 Anything you represent on a screen if it is a metaphor for real-
world entity then users would easily understand.
Disclose information in a progressive fashion:
 The interface should be organized hierarchically i.e. on the
main screen the information about the task, an object or some
behavior should be presented first at a high level of
abstraction. More detail should be presented after the user
indicates interest with a mouse pick.
 The golden rules: Make the interface consistent

Allow the user to put the current task into a meaningful

context:
 Many interfaces have dozens of screens. So it is important to
provide indicators consistently so that the user know about the
doing work. The user should also know from which page has
navigated to the current page and from the current page where can
navigate.
Maintain consistency across a family of applications:
 The development of some set of applications all should follow and
implement the same design and rules so that consistency is
maintained among applications.
If past interactive models have created user expectations
do not make changes unless there is a compelling reason.
 User interface analysis and design

 The overall process for analyzing and designing begins with creation of
different models of the system function
 Interface analysis and design models:
 Four models come into play when a user interface is to be analyzed and
designed.
 Human engineer establishes a user model, software engineer creates a
design model, the end user develops a mental image that is often called user’s
mental model and the implementers creates a implementation model.
 The role of the interface designer is to reconcile these differences and derive a
consistent representation of the interface.
 The user model establishes the profile of end users of the system.
 To build an effective user interface all design should begin with an
understanding of the intended user including their profiles of their age, sex,
physical abilities, education, cultural or ethnical background, motivation,
goals and personality.
Consider syntactic knowledge of the user
 The level of interaction that are required to use the interface effectively.
Consider semantic knowledge of the user
 The underlying sense of the application, an understanding of the
functions that are performed, the meaning of input and output, and the
objectives of the system.
Users can be categorized as
 Novices: no syntactic knowledge of the system and a little semantic
knowledge of computer usage.
 Knowledgeable, intermittent users: reasonable semantic
knowledge but relatively low syntactic knowledge to use the interface.
 Knowledge, frequent users: good semantic and syntactic knowledge.
Interface analysis and design process(figure)

Figure
Analysis and design process:
The analysis and design process of a user interface is
iterative and can be represented by a spiral model.
 The analysis and design process of user interface
consists of four framework activities.
 User, task, and environment analysis and modeling
 Interface design
 Interface construction(implementation)
 Interface validation
 Interface analysis focuses on the profile of users who will interact
with the system.
 Users skill set and understanding of the new system are recorded.
 Based on that different user categories are defined.
 For each category requirements are elicited.
 Software engineer attempts to understand the system perception for
each class of users.
 Once requirements have been defined a more detailed task analysis
is conducted.
 Those tasks that the user performs to accomplish the goals of the
system are identified, described and elaborated.
 Analysis of the user environment focuses on the physical work
environment.
Among the questions to be asked are:
 Where will the interface be located physically?
 Will the user be sitting, standing, or performing other tasks
unrelated to the interface?
 Does the interface hardware accommodate space, light, or noise
constraints?
 Are there special human factors considerations driven by
environmental factors?
The information gathered as part of the analysis
activity is used to create an analysis model for the
interface.
Using this model as basis design activity commences.
Interface design:
 The goal of the interface design is to define set of interface objects and
actions that enable a user to perform all define tasks.
Interface construction:
 It begins with the creation of a prototype that enables usage scenarios
to be evaluated.
 User interface development tools may be used to complete
construction activity
Validation:
 Validation focuses on
 The ability of the interface to implement every user task correctly.
 The degree to which the interface is easy to use and easy to learn.
 The users acceptance of the interface as a useful tool in their work.
 Interface Analysis
Incase of user interface, (analysis) understanding the
problem means understanding

 The people (end users) who will interact with the system (user
analysis)

 The tasks that end users must perform to do their work(task analysis)

 The content that is presented as part of the interface(content analysis)

 The environment in which these tasks will be conducted.

(environment analysis)

.
 Interface analysis: user analysis

 User analysis:

 Mental image and design model coincide when we work to understand the users and

how these people use the system.

 From the user interviews we can better understand the users

 User interviews:

 Most direct approach to understand the users is interviews.

 Interviews involves representatives from software team who meet with end users to

better understand their need., motivations, work culture.

 This can be accomplished in one-one meetings or focus groups.

 Sales input: sales people meet with customers and users and gather information.

 Marketing input: market analysis will be performed.

 Support input: support staff talk with users.

 Interface analysis: user analysis

 The following set of questions will help the designer to better understand the users.
 Are users trained professionals, technicians, clerical or manufacturing workers?
 What level of formal education does the average user have?
 Are the users capable of learning materials?
 Are users expert typists or keyboard phobic?
 What is the age range of the user?
 Will the users be represented by one gender?
 How are users compensated for the work they perform?
 Do users work normal office hours or do they work until the job is done?
 Is the software to be an integral part of the work or will it be used occasionally?
 What is the primary spoken language among users?
 What are the consequences if a user makes a mistake using the system?
 Are users expert in subject matters that is addressed by the system?
 Do users want to know the technology that sit behind the interface?

The answers to these question will allow the designer to understand who the end users
are, what is likely to motivate and please them, how they can be grouped into different
user classes, what their mental model of the system are.
 Interface analysis: task analysis

 Task analysis and modeling:

 The goal of the task analysis is to answer
 What work will the user perform?
 What tasks and subtasks will be performed?
 What objects will user manipulate?
 What is the sequence of work tasks - work flow?
 What is the hierarchy of tasks?
 All analysis techniques are applied to user interface analysis.
 Use-cases:
 Use-cases developed to show how end user perform some work task.
 Use-cases provides a basic description of important work tasks for the system.
 From use-cases software engineer extract tasks, objects and overall flow of
interaction.
 Interface analysis: task analysis

 Task elaboration:
 Define and classify tasks
 One approach to elaboration is step wise elaboration or stepwise refinement.
 Object elaboration:
 Extract objects those are manipulated by end user
 These objects can be categorized into classes
 Attributes of each class are defined
 Workflow analysis:
 When number of different users and each playing a different role it is necessary to
apply workflow analysis.
 This technique allows the software engineer to understand how the work process
is completed when several people are involved.
 Hierarchical representation:
 A task hierarchy can be defined for each user type.
 The hierarchy is derived from step wise elaboration.
 Interface analysis: content analysis

Analysis of display content:

 After identifying and elaborating the user tasks the next step is
presentation of the user interface content.
 The format of the content is considered.
 Display content can be a
 A character based report
 A graphical display( a picture of a person, a histogram, a 3D
model)
 A specialized information(audio or video files)
 Interface analysis: environment analysis

Analysis of work environment:

 In some applications the user interface for a system is placed in
a user friendly location – proper lighting, good display height
and easy keyboard access.
 In some cases lighting may be optional, noise may be a factor, a
keyboard or mouse may not be an option.
 The interface design may be constrained by many factors.
 In addition to physical environment factors, the work place
culture is also consider during environment analysis.
 Interface design steps

It is an iterative process

Each interface design step occurs number of times,
each elaborating and refining information.
The steps are
 Using information developed during interface analysis, define
interface objects and actions(operations)
 Define events(user actions that will cause a change in state of
the interface). Model this behavior.
 Depict each interface state as it will look to the end user( define
interface states).
 Indicate how the user interprets the state of the system.
Applying interface design steps:
 Use cases are parsed to define objects and their actions
 The nouns in the use-cases are objects and verbs in the use-cases
are actions.
 Create a list of objects and actions
 After defining the objects and actions they are elaborated
iteratively.
 They are categorized by the type of the object.
 There are three types of objects
 Source objects(ex: report file)
 Target objects(ex: printer)
 Application objects(ex: hard copy of the file)
 After defining all objects and actions screen layout is performed.
 Screen layout is an interactive process.
 In this process the following are conducted
 Graphical design
 Placement of icons
 Definition of screen text
 Titling for windows
 Definition of major and minor menu items
 The layout is organized in a manner that complement the metaphor.
 Example objects and actions from use-cases are
 Access the safe home system
 Enters ID and password
 Checks system status
 Arms or disarms safe home system
 Display floor plan and sensor locations
 Display zones on the floor plan
 Changes zones on the floor plan
 Displays video camera locations on floor plan
 Select video camera for viewing
 Views video images
 Zooms the video camera
User interface design patterns:
 A wide verity of UI patterns are available. Design pattern is a design
solution to a specific problem.
Patterns are available for
 The complete UI
 Page layout
 Forms and input
 Tables
 Direct data manipulation
 Navigation
 Searching
 Page elements
 e-Commerce
Design issues:
 There are six common issues in designing the user interface
 Response time
 Help facilities
 Error handling
 Menu and command labeling

 Application accessibility
 Provide easy access for those with special needs
 Internationalization
Response time:
 An important measure of performance of the user interface is the
response time. Response time is measured from the point at
which the user performs some control action until the software
responds with the desired output. System response time has two
characteristics: length and variability. If the response time is too
long user frustration and stress is the result.
Internationalization:
 Internationalization is the process of designing a software
application so that it can potentially be adapted to various
languages and regions without engineering changes. For example,
in India date is formatted as DD/MM/YYYY but US users will
format a date as MM/DD/YYYY.
 Error handling:
 It should not be expected that user will always perfectly follow the
instructions provided by the system. Sometimes user mistakenly selects
the wrong option or may do not understand the directive messages
correctly and gives some unexpected instructions to the system.
 In this situation, a system with good user interface will guide the user to
proper direction by providing meaningful error messages rather than
just hang up and surprise the user with some abnormal behavior.
Whenever user do something unexpected, the interface should let the
user know what has gone wrong and display all possible alternative
solutions to overcome the wrong activity.
 For example, in case of an ATM system if user enters wrong PIN
number, it is not sufficient to just inform him the same by means of a
message; rather we can also suggest him to enter the PIN again.
Help facilities:
 Help Message Issue A good user interface should always be
ready to answer whenever the user says
 • I want information •
 I am in trouble
 Help messages should be there when the user is unable to
understand the system’s behavior and asking for help. Help
messages should be elaborative and fulfill all type of queries of
user. Even a good system can predict user’s intuition and give
suggestive messages even when user is not demanding for help
 User interface design evaluation

 User interface must be evaluated to determine whether it meets the

needs of the user.
 Once an operational user interface prototype has been created it must
be evaluated to determine whether it meets the needs of the user.
 The user interface evaluation cycle takes the form shown in the figure.
 After the design model has been completed, a first level prototype is
created.
 The prototype is evaluated by the user.
 Design modifications are made based on the user input(feedback) and
next level prototype is created.
 The evaluation cycle continues until no further modifications to the
interface design are necessary.
 This prototype approach is effective.
Design evaluation cycle figure