Lecture 11

Design Rules

Adnan Hussain
design rules
Designing for maximum usability
– the goal of interaction design

 Principles of usability
 general understanding

 Standards and guidelines

 direction for design

 Design patterns
 capture and reuse design knowledge
Design Rules
 We require design rules, which are rules a
designer can follow in order to increase
the usability of the eventual software
product.
Design Rules
 We can classify these rules along two dimensions,
based on the rule’s
 authority and
 generality.
 By authority, we mean an indication of whether or not
the rule must be followed in
design or whether it is only suggested
Design Rules
 By generality, we mean whether the rule
can be applied to many design situations
or whether it is focused on a more limited
application situation.
Design Rules
 Rules also vary in their level of abstraction, with
some abstracting away from the detail of the
design solution and others being quite specific.
 It is also important to determine the origins of a
design rule.
Types of design rules
 principles
 abstract design rules
 low authority
 high generality
 standards Guidelines

increasing generality
increasing generality
 specific design rules
 high authority
 limited application
Standards
 guidelines
 lower authority
 more general application increasing authority
increasing authority
Design Rules
 The design rules are used to apply the
theory in practice.
 The theory underlying the separate design
rules can help the designer understand the
trade-off for the design that would result in
following or ignoring some of the rules.
Principles, Standards and Guidelines
 There exists distinction between
principles, standards and guidelines.
 Principles are derived from knowledge of the
psychological, computational and sociological
aspects of the problem domains and are
largely independent of the technology.
 They depend to a much greater extent on a
deeper understanding of the human element
in the interaction.
Principles, Standards and Guidelines
 Guidelines are less abstract and often more
technology oriented.
 As they are also general, it is important for a designer to know
what theoretical evidence there is to support them.
 A designer will have less of a need to know the
underlying theory for applying a standard. However,
since standards carry a much higher level of
authority, it is more important that the theory
underlying them be correct or sound.
Principles to support usability
Learnability
the ease with which new users can begin effective interaction and
achieve maximal performance

Flexibility
the multiplicity of ways the user and system exchange information

Robustness
the level of support provided the user in determining successful
achievement and assessment of goal-directed behaviour
Principles to support usability
 Learnability: the ease with which new
users can begin effective interaction and
achieve maximal performance
Principles to support usability
 Flexibility: the multiplicity of ways the
user and system exchange information
Principles to support usability
 Robustness: the level of support
provided the user in determining
successful achievement and assessment
of goal-directed behavior.
Principles of learnability

 Familiarity
 how prior knowledge applies to new system
 guess-ability; metaphors; affordance
Principles of learn-ability
 Generalizability
 extending specific interaction knowledge to
new situations
 eg. cut/paste/copy across apps
Principles of learn-ability
 Consistency
 likeness
in input/output behavior arising
from similar situations or task objectives
Predictability
 Predictability of an interactive system
means that the user’s knowledge of the
interaction history is sufficient to determine
the result of his future interaction with it.
 There are many degrees to which
predictability can be satisfied.
Predictability and deterministic behavior
 Predictability of an interactive system is distinguished from
deterministic behavior of the computer system alone.
 Most computer systems are ultimately deterministic machines,
so that given the state at any one point in time and the operation
which is to be performed at that time, there is only one possible
state that can
result.
Synthesizability
 Predictability says nothing about the way
the user forms a model of the system’s
behavior. Synthesis, is the ability of the user
to assess the effect of past operations on
the current state.
 can observe account of a change
 eg. moving a file in command-line vs WIMP interface
Flexibility
 Flexibility refers to the multiplicity of ways
in which the end-user and the system
exchange information.
Principles of flexibility
Dialogue initiative
 freedom from system imposed constraints on input dialogue
 system vs. user pre-emptiveness

Multithreading
 ability of system to support user interaction for more than one task
at a time
 concurrent vs. interleaving; multimodality

Task migratability
 passing responsibility for task execution between user and system
Principles of flexibility (ctd)
Substitutivity
 allowing equivalent values of input and output
to be substituted for each other
 representation multiplicity; equal opportunity

Customizability
 modifiabilityof the user interface by user
(adaptability) or system (adaptivity)
Robustness
 In a work or task domain, a user is
engaged with a computer in order to
achieve some set of goals.
 The robustness of that interaction covers
features that support the successful
achievement and assessment of the goals.
Principles of robustness
Observability
 ability of user to evaluate the internal state of the system from its
perceivable representation
 browsability; defaults; reachability; persistence; operation visibility

Recoverability
 ability of user to take corrective action once an error has been
recognized
 reachability; forward/backward recovery; commensurate effort
Principles of robustness (ctd)
Responsiveness
 how the user perceives the rate of
communication with the system
 Stability

Task conformance
 degree to which system services support all of
the user's tasks
 task completeness; task adequacy
Using design rules
Guidelines

increasing generality
increasing generality
Design rules
 suggest how to increase usability
Standards
 differ in generality and authority

increasing
increasingauthority
authority
Standards

 set by national or international bodies to ensure

compliance by a large community of designers standards
require sound underlying theory and slowly changing
technology.

 hardware standards more common than software high

authority and low level of detail.

 ISO 9241 defines usability as effectiveness, efficiency

and satisfaction with which users accomplish tasks.
Underlying theory –hardware Standards
 Standards for hardware are based on an
understanding of physiology or
ergonomics/human factors, the results of
which are relatively well known, fixed and
readily adaptable to design of the hardware.
Underlying theory –software Standards
 Software standards are based on theories
from psychology or cognitive science,
which are less well formed, still evolving
and not very easy to interpret in the
language of software design.
Change
 Hardware is more difficult and expensive to change
than software, which is usually designed to be very
flexible.
 Consequently, requirements changes for
hardware do not occur as frequently as for software.
 Since standards are also relatively stable, they are more
suitable for hardware than software.
ISO 9241
 One component of the ISO standard 9241, pertaining to usability
specification, applies equally to both hardware and software design.
 Usability: The effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which
specified users
achieve specified goals in particular environments.
ISO 9241
 Effectiveness: The accuracy and completeness with which specified
users can achieve specified goals in particular environments.

 Efficiency: The resources expended in relation to the accuracy and

completeness of goals achieved.
ISO 9241
 Satisfaction: The comfort and
acceptability of the work system to its
users and other people affected by its use.
Strength of Standards
 Lies in ability to force large communities to abide
(so-called authority)
 Most standards are suggestions
 Some practices become de facto standards before
formalization
Guidelines
 more suggestive and general
 many textbooks and reports full of guidelines
 abstract guidelines (principles) applicable during early
life cycle activities
 detailed guidelines (style guides) applicable during later
life cycle activities
 understanding justification for guidelines aids in resolving
conflicts
Guidelines for Interactive
Design
 …or interface design
 Smith and Mosier (Mitre) 6 basic categories
 data entry, data display, sequence control, user guidance,
data transmission, data protection
 broken into more specific subcategories
 Example:
Data Entry
position designation
distinctive cursor – movable, visual feature (shape, blink,
etc.)
:
See also 1.1-17 Distinctive multiple cursors
 allows cross-referencing
Guidelines for Interactive
Design
 Mayhew
 morerecent, comprehensive, general
guidelines in a catalog
Guidelines
 Dialog styles
 question and answer, form-filling, menu
selection, function keys, command language,
query, natural language, direct manipulation
 Most guidelines applicable for implementation
of any one of dialog styles in isolation
 Must also consider mixing of styles in an
application (Mayhew provides guidelines on
this)
Specific Guidelines
 Apple’s HCI Guidelines: the Apple
Desktop Interface
 Abstract principle in Apple
guidelines is consistency
 Effectiveapplications are both
consistent within themselves and
consistent with one another.
 More concrete guideline
 ‘noun-verb’ ordering – user selects an
object on desktop, then the operation
Dialog Initiative
 Under general usability category of
flexibility principle
 The user, not the computer, initiates and
controls all actions
 Involves a trade-off
 user freedom vs system protection
GUI Systems
 Guidelines on how to adhere to abstract
principles for usability in programming
environment

 Style guides
 OpenLook
 Open Software Foundation Motif GUI
 involve using toolkits with high-level widgets
 each have own look-and-feel
 promote consistency
OpenLook example
 For design of menus
 Suggestion for grouping items in the same
menu
 “Use white space between long groups of controls
on menus or in short groups when screen real
estate is not an issue.”
 Justification: more options on a menu, longer it
takes user to locate and point to item
 Careful: grouping logically related items like saving
and deleting files may result in a simple slip in
pointing
Golden Rules
 Commitment can help designer to develop
more usable system.
 For this purpose, number of advocates of
user-centered design have presented sets of
‘golden rules’ or heuristics.
Golden rules and heuristics
 “Broad brush” design rules
 Useful check list for good design
 Better design using these than using nothing!
 Different collections e.g.
 Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics (covered in coming
lectures)
 Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules
 Norman’s 7 Principles
Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules
1. Strive for consistency
2. Enable frequent users to use shortcuts
3. Offer informative feedback
4. Design dialogs to yield closure
5. Offer error prevention and simple error handling
6. Permit easy reversal of actions
7. Support internal locus of control
8. Reduce short-term memory load
Norman’s 7 Principles
1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the
head.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks.
3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and
Evaluation.
4. Get the mappings right.
5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and
artificial.
6. Design for error.
7. When all else fails, standardize.
HCI design patterns
 An approach to reusing knowledge about successful
design solutions
 Originated in architecture: Alexander
 A pattern is an invariant solution to a recurrent problem
within a specific context.
 Examples
 Light on Two Sides of Every Room (architecture)
 Go back to a safe place (HCI)
 Patterns do not exist in isolation but are linked to other
patterns in languages which enable complete designs to
be generated
HCI design patterns (cont.)
 Characteristics of patterns
 capture design practice not theory
 capture the essential common properties of good examples of
design
 represent design knowledge at varying levels: social,
organisational, conceptual, detailed
 embody values and can express what is humane in interface design
 are intuitive and readable and can therefore be used for
communication between all stakeholders
 a pattern language should be generative and assist in the
development of complete designs.
Summary
Principles for usability
 repeatable design for usability relies on maximizing benefit of
one good design by abstracting out the general properties which
can direct purposeful design
 The success of designing for usability requires both creative
insight (new paradigms) and purposeful principled practice

Using design rules

 standards and guidelines to direct design activity