Chapter 6

Design Rules and Implementation Support

2 Outline

 Principles to support usability

 Standards
 Guidelines
 Golden rules and heuristics
 Implementation support

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3 Design rules
 are rules that a designer can follow in order to increase the usability of
the system/product
 the goal of interaction design
 Design rules should be used early in the lifecycle
 Classified Based on the rule’s authority and generality
 Authority indication of whether or not the rule must be followed in design or
whether it is only suggested.
 Generality whether the rule can be applied to many design situations or whether it
is focused on a more limited application situation.
 Vary in their level of abstraction,

Design Rules 07/22/2022

4 types of design rules
 Principles
 abstract design rules
 low authority and high generality
e.g. interface should be easy to navigate
 Standards
 specific design rules
 high authority and limited application
 measurable
e.g. use color RGB #1010D0 on home links
 Guidelines
 lower authority
 more general application
 advice on how to achieve principles
e.g. use color to highlight links
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5 Principles to support usability

Learnability

usability
Flexibility

Robustness

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6 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

Design Rules 07/22/2022

 Principles to support usability
 Robustness: the level of support provided the user in determining successful achievement
and assessment of goal-directed behavior.
8 Principles of learnability
Predictability
 determining effect of future actions based on past interaction history
 operation visibility - user actions should be matched by a response

Synthesizability
 assessing the effect of past actions
 Honesty when an operation changes some aspect of the internal
state, it is important that the change is seen by the user
 immediate vs. eventual honesty

Design Rules 07/22/2022

9 Principles of learnability (ctd)
Familiarity
 how prior knowledge applies to new system
 guessability; affordance
Generalizability
 extending specific interaction knowledge to new situations
Consistency
 likeness in input/output behaviour arising from similar situations or task
objectives

Design Rules 07/22/2022

10 Principles of flexibility
Dialogue initiative
 Who controls dialogue flow
 system vs. user pre-emptiveness
 user pre-emptive dialog allows the user to offer any input action at any time for
maximum flexibility.
 system-driven interaction hold back flexibility whereas a user-driven interaction favors
it.
 modal dialog boxes are system pre-emptive
 direct manipulation is user pre-emptive
 minimize system pre-emptive dialogue and maximize user pre-emptive dialogue

Design Rules 07/22/2022

11 Principles of flexibility
Multithreading
 ability of system to support user interaction for more than one task at a time

Task migration
 passing responsibility for task execution between user and system
 Example Spell-checking

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12 Principles of flexibility (ctd)
Substitutivity
 allowing equivalent values of input and output to be substituted for each
other
 representation multiplicity; equal opportunity
Example values in input fractions/decimals, values in output both digital and
analog.
Customizability
 modifiability of the user interface by user (adaptability) or system
(adaptivity)

Design Rules 07/22/2022

13 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

Design Rules 07/22/2022

14 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

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15 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
 Example [of standards] - ISO 9241 "Ergonomic Requirements for
Office Work with Visual Display Terminals (VDT)

Design Rules 07/22/2022

16 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

Design Rules 07/22/2022

17 Golden rules and heuristics
 A number of advocates of user-centered design have presented sets of ‘golden
rules’ or heuristics e.g.
 Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules
 Norman’s 7 Principles
 Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics

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18 Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules
1. Strive for consistency
 Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar situations
2. Enable frequent users to use shortcuts
 Abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands, and macro facilities
3. Offer informative feedback
 For every operator action, there should be some system feedback

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 Rules Cont.
19

4. Design dialogs to yield closure

 gives the operators the satisfaction of accomplishment,
 a sense of relief, and
 an indication that the way is clear to prepare for the next group of actions.
5. Offer error prevention and simple error handling
 the system should be able to detect the error and offer simple,
comprehensible mechanisms for handling the error.

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20 Rules Cont.
6. Permit easy reversal of actions
 relieves anxiety
 encourages exploration of unfamiliar options
7. Support internal locus of control
 Design the system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the
responders.
8. Reduce short-term memory load
 short-term memory requires that
 displays be kept simple,
 multiple page displays be consolidated,
 window-motion
Design Rules
frequency be reduced, and 07/22/2022

 sufficient training time be allotted for codes, mnemonics, and sequences of actions
21 Norman’s 7 Principles
1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head.
 provide the necessary knowledge within the environment
2. Simplify the structure of tasks.
3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and Evaluation.
 The more visible functions are, the more likely users will be able to know
what to do next

Design Rules 07/22/2022

22 Norman’s 7 Principles Cont.

4. Get the mappings right.

 Mapping relationship between controls and their effects in the world.
5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and artificial.
 Determining ways of restricting the kind of user interaction that can take place at a given moment.
6. Design for error.
 Anticipate the errors the user could make and design recovery into the system
7. When all else fails, standardize.
 If there are no natural mappings then arbitrary mappings should be standardized so that users only
have to learn them once

Design Rules 07/22/2022

23 HCI patterns
 An approach to reusing knowledge about successful design solutions
 A pattern is an invariant solution to a recurrent problem within a specific
context.
 Example HCI pattern ‘go back to a safe place’
 Patterns do not exist in isolation but are linked to other patterns in
languages which enable complete designs to be generated

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24 HCI 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
 are not neutral but embody values within their rationale.
 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.

Design Rules 07/22/2022

Implementation support
Implementation support

 programming tools
 levels of services for programmers
 windowing systems
 core support for separate and simultaneous user-system activity
 programming the application and control of dialogue
 interaction toolkits
 bring programming closer to level of user perception
 user interface management systems
 controls relationship between presentation and functionality
Introduction

How does HCI affect of the programmer?

Advances in coding have elevated programming

hardware specific
 interaction-technique specific

Layers of development tools

 windowing systems
 interaction toolkits
 user interface management systems
Elements of windowing systems

Device independence
programming the abstract terminal device drivers
image models for output and (partially) input
 pixels
 PostScript (MacOS X, NextStep)
 Graphical Kernel System (GKS)
 Programmers' Hierarchical Interface to Graphics (PHIGS)

Resource sharing
achieving simultaneity of user tasks
window system supports independent processes
isolation of individual applications
roles of a windowing system
Architectures of windowing systems

three possible software architectures

 all assume device driver is separate
 differ in how multiple application management is implemented

1. each application manages all processes

 everyone worries about synchronization
 reduces portability of applications

2. management role within kernel of operating system

 applications tied to operating system

3. management role as separate application

maximum portability
The client-server architecture
X Windows architecture
X Windows architecture (ctd)

 pixel imaging model with some pointing mechanism

 X protocol defines server-client communication

 separate window manager client enforces policies for input/output:

 how to change input focus
 tiled vs. overlapping windows
 inter-client data transfer
Programming the application - 1
read-evaluation loop

repeat
read-event(myevent)
case myevent.type
type_1:
do type_1 processing
type_2:
do type_2 processing
...
type_n:
do type_n processing
end case
end repeat
 Programming the application - 1
notification-based
void main(String[] args) {
Menu menu = new Menu();
menu.setOption(“Save”);
menu.setOption(“Quit”);
menu.setAction(“Save”,mySave)
menu.setAction(“Quit”,myQuit)
...
}

int mySave(Event e) {
// save the current file
}

int myQuit(Event e) {
// close down
}
 going with the grain
 system style affects the interfaces
 modal dialogue box
 easy with event-loop (just have extra read-event loop)
 hard with notification (need lots of mode flags)
 non-modal dialogue box
 hard with event-loop (very complicated main loop)
 easy with notification (just add extra handler)

beware!
if you don’t explicitly design it will just happen
implementation should not drive design
 Using toolkits
Interaction objects
 input and output
intrinsically linked

move press release move

Toolkits provide this level of abstraction
 programming with interaction objects (or
 techniques, widgets, gadgets)
 promote consistency and generalizability
 through similar look and feel
 amenable to object-oriented programming
 interfaces in Java
 Java toolkit – AWT (abstract windowing toolkit)

 Java classes for buttons, menus, etc.

 Notification based;
 AWT 1.0 – need to subclass basic widgets
 AWT 1.1 and beyond -– callback objects

 Swing toolkit
 built on top of AWT – higher level features
 uses MVC architecture (see later)
User Interface Management Systems (UIMS)

 UIMS add another level above toolkits

 toolkits too difficult for non-programmers

 concerns of UIMS
 conceptual architecture
 implementation techniques
 support infrastructure

 non-UIMS terms:
 UI development system (UIDS)
 UI development environment (UIDE)
 e.g. Visual Basic
 UIMS as conceptual architecture

 separation between application semantics and presentation

 improves:
 portability – runs on different systems
 reusability – components reused cutting costs
 multiple interfaces – accessing same functionality
 customizability – by designer and user
 UIMS tradition – interface layers / logical
components
 linguistic: lexical/syntactic/semantic

 Seeheim:

 Arch/Slinky
presentation dialogue application

dialogue
func. core
adaptor lexical

functional
core physical
 Seeheim model

lexical syntactic semantic

Functionality
Dialogue
USER
USER Presentation (application APPLICATION
Control
interface)

switch
 conceptual vs. implementation
Seeheim
 arose out of implementation experience
 but principal contribution is conceptual
 concepts part of ‘normal’ UI language

 … because of Seeheim …
… we think differently!

e.g. the lower box, the switch

 needed for implementation
presentation dialogue application
 but not conceptual
 semantic feedback
 different kinds of feedback:
 lexical – movement of mouse
 syntactic – menu highlights
 semantic – sum of numbers changes

 semantic feedback often slower

 use rapid lexical/syntactic feedback

 but may need rapid semantic feedback

 freehand drawing
 highlight trash can or folder when file dragged
 what’s this?

Lexical Syntactic Semantic

Application
Dialogue
USER Presentation Interface APPLICATION
Control
Model
 the bypass/switch

Lexical Syntactic Semantic

Application
Dialogue
USER Presentation Interface APPLICATION
Control
Model

direct communication
rapid semantic between application
and presentation
feedback but regulated by
dialogue control
 more layers!

dialogue
func. core
adaptor lexical

functional
core physical
Arch/Slinky

 more layers! – distinguishes lexical/physical

 like a ‘slinky’ spring different layers may be thicker (more
important) in different systems
 or in different components
dialogue
func. core
adaptor lexical

functional
core physical
monolithic vs. components

 Seeheim has big components

 often easier to use smaller ones

 esp. if using object-oriented toolkits

 Smalltalk used MVC – model–view–controller

 model – internal logical state of component
 view – how it is rendered on screen
 controller – processes user input
MVC
model - view - controller

view

model

controller
MVC issues

 MVC is largely pipeline model:

 input  control  model  view  output
 but in graphical interface
 input only has meaning in relation to output
 e.g. mouse click
 need to know what was clicked
 controller has to decide what to do with click
 but view knows what is shown where!
 in practice controller ‘talks’ to view
 separation not complete
PAC model

 PAC model closer to Seeheim

 abstraction – logical state of component
 presentation – manages input and output
 control – mediates between them

 manages hierarchy and multiple views

 control part of PAC objects communicate

 PAC cleaner in many ways …

but MVC used more in practice
 (e.g. Java Swing)
PAC
presentation - abstraction - control
A P A P
C C

abstraction presentation

control

A P
C A P
C
Implementation of UIMS

 Techniques for dialogue controller

• menu networks • state transition diagrams
• grammar notations • event languages
• declarative languages• constraints
• graphical specification

 for most of these see chapter 16

 N.B. constraints
 instead of what happens say what should be true
 used in groupware as well as single user interfaces
 (ALV - abstraction–link–view)

see chapter 16 for more details on several of these

graphical specification

 what it is
 draw components on screen
 set actions with script or links to program

 in use
 with raw programming most popular technique
 e.g. Visual Basic, Dreamweaver, Flash

 local vs. global

 hard to ‘see’ the paths through system
 focus on what can be seen on one screen
The drift of dialogue control

 internal control
(e.g., read-evaluation loop)

 external control
(independent of application semantics or presentation)

 presentation control
(e.g., graphical specification)
Summary

Levels of programming support tools

 Windowing systems
 device independence
 multiple tasks
 Paradigms for programming the application
 read-evaluation loop
 notification-based
 Toolkits
 programming interaction objects
 UIMS
 conceptual architectures for separation
 techniques for expressing dialogue