Interaction Styles, Guidelines and Standards

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Interaction Styles, Guidelines and Standards

• Lynne Hall

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Interaction Styles

• command line
• menus
• natural language
• question/answer and queries
• form fills and spreadsheets
• WIMP
• point and click
• 3D interfaces

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Shneidermans 8 golden rules of dialogue design

• Strive for consistency
• Enable frequent users to use shortcuts
• Offer informative feedback
• Design dialogs to yield closure
• Offer simple error handling
• Permit easy reversal of actions
• Support internal locus of control
• Reduce short-term memory load

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Direct manipulation

• why and how does it work?
• visibility
• incremental action and rapid feedback
• reversability
• all actions syntactically correct
• actions manipulate visible objects directly
• Death of the desktop metaphor?
• from Xerox Star to Windows 95

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Principles, guidelines, and standards

• Principles
• high level and widely applicable
• Guidelines
• more detailed, maybe in form of rules
• in-house and proprietary style guides
• Standards
• have formal authority

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Example principles

• know the user
• reduce cognitive load
• design for error
• maintain clarity and consistency

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Using Guidelines

• many sets of guidelines
• helps to understand the underlying reasoning
• basis of heuristic evaluation (more later)
• a collection of guidelines links
• www.ida.liu.se/miker/hci/guidelines.html

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Guideline Example

• 2.0/13 Consistent Wording
• For displayed data and labels, choose words
  carefully and then use them consistently.
• Example
• (Good) Record A Change Record B Change
  Record C Change
• (Bad) Update of Record A Record B
  Maintenance Change in Record C

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Example Continued...

• Comment
• Consistent word usage is particularly important
  for technical terms. Standard terminology should
  be defined and documented in a glossary for
  reference by interface designers as well as by
  users.

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Hix and Hartsons guidelines
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Hix and Hartson (2)
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Standards

• ISO 9241
• European directive (90/270/EEC)

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ISO 9241

• Requirements for non-keyboard input devices
• Dialogue principles
• Guidance on usability specification and measures
• Presentation of information
• User guidance
• Menu dialogues
• Command dialogues
• Direct manipulation dialogues
• Form-filling dialogues

• General introduction
• Guidance on task requirements
• VDU requirements
• Keyboard requirements
• Workstation layout and postural requirements
• Environmental requirements
• Display requirements with reflections
• Requirements for displayed colours

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ISO 9241 example
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European directive of 29.5.90

• minimum health safety requirements for
  employees who work with display screens
• wide exceptions
• employers obligations

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Conclusions

• Interaction Styles, Guidelines and Standards
  provide a basis for design
• Industry and international standards
• Reduce need for innovation
• Maximise memorability and ease transfer of skills