In this lecture, Jay Chua presents four rules that Wei Tsang has distilled from existing UI/UX design literature: Don’t make me think, or work, or wait, or cry.

Rule 1: Don’t Make Me Think

  • Give clear, simple, useful, readable message/information/update/feedback to users
  • Guide users on what to do
  • Be consistent with what users expect
  • Don’t hide things that user may need
  • Provide help, inline
  • Place items logically (in context, grouped, hierarchically)
  • The primary purpose of every page/view should be clear

Rule 2: Don’t Make Me Wait

  • Provide visual feedback ASAP
  • Tell users to wait (spinning beach ball, progress bar, DING! when done)

Rule 3: Don’t Make Me Work

  • Provide shortcut for experts
  • Set reasonable defaults
  • Make expected actions easy to reach (Fitt’s Law)
  • Allow direct manipulation

Rule 4: Don’t Make Me Cry

  • 4.1. Keep dangerous actions away
  • 4.2. Protect users work, always (allow undo, save a copy)
  • 4.3. Always provides a way out

How to Evaluate the UI/UX of Your Project?

Quantitative Analysis

  • Measure the time taken for the user to complete a task
  • Can break down into different components (time to click, time to read, etc)

Neilsen’s Heuristic

Think Aloud Protocol

  • Ask a tester to speak out what they are thinking while using your system
  • See a demo video here

References



Published

18 September 2015

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