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
- 3-5 evaluators consider the heuristics and apply it to your project, one by one.
- Here is an example.
Think Aloud Protocol
- Ask a tester to speak out what they are thinking while using your system
- See a demo video here
References
- Bruce Tognazzini’s First Principles of Interaction Design
- Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
- The Nielsen Norman Group website has a treasure trove of articles on UI/UX design.
- Ben Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design
- Joshua Porter’s Principles of User Interface Design
- Peter Vukovic’s 7 Unbreakable Laws of User Interface Design
Published
18 September 2015