Design & Development - Interface & Attributes: articles about the attributes, features and interface design of an electronic performance support system. Recommended Books

Crafting a wizard
IBM developersWorks: Designing an effective wizard is no magician's trick. Even though wizards are intended to make complex tasks appear easy, shielding users from complex details is real work to designers and developers. This article will share 15 dos and don'ts gleaned from the author's experience to help you create a wizard that works. (2001-09-16)

COMMON GROUND: A Pattern Language for Human-Computer Interface Design
How can the HCI community help inexperienced designers move away from clumsy designs and labor-intensive processes towards this state of confidence and skill, without spending years learning it all the hard way? To begin with, we could start building a human-computer interface pattern language.  A language of this sort is a set of interrelated patterns, which share similar assumptions, terminologies, and contexts.  At its best, such a language would both aid individual interface designers in their day-to-day work (as the Design Patterns book clearly does for many software engineers), and also help the whole industry develop better tools and paradigms. (2001-08-19)

IBM User Interface Guidelines
These user interface guidelines govern the design of IBM network-based products. This is a well designed document that includes both design principles and specific guidelines. Many of the principles and guidelines can be applied to Web sites and consumer software products.  (2001-08-05)

KDE User Interface Guidelines
This document is intended to provide a place where KDE application designers/developers can review user interface design principles. It is intended to complement, not compete with, the interface standards. Design principles are not the same as standards; I view standards as something that can be measured and enforced. I like to think that the standards would be motivated by the principles. The standards should be defined so that a given application can be reviewed against them to determine its degree of compliance. However, our goal here is not to provide measurable standards, but rather to encourage better design and improve usability. (2001-07-22)

Making Medical Device Interfaces More User-Friendly 
Medical Devicelink: "A lot of medical device displays look overstuffed with information and controls so that very little empty space remains. Such space is important in a user interface, because it helps to separate information into related groups and provides a resting place for the user's eye. Overly dense-looking user interfaces can be initially intimidating to nurses, technicians, and physicians, making it difficult for them to pick out specific information at a glance." (2001-07-22)

Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines
This article describes a new user interface model called inductive user interface (IUI). Also called inductive navigation, the IUI model suggests how to make software applications simpler by breaking features into screens or pages that are easy to explain and understand. This IUI model is emerging in various Microsoft projects, most notably Money 2000. This article provides an introduction to IUI, rather than a firm, comprehensive set of guidelines. (2001-07-08)

Reducing the user interface
IBM Developer Works: User interfaces are constantly getting larger and more functional. There's probably a simple exponential growth function similar to Moore's Law that could describe it, but whatever it is, the key is that UIs keep expanding. Many applications have far more data and functions than a single user would ever want or be able to use. This paper focuses on, among other things, ways to enable users to quickly filter down large data sets and to limit functions based on their job roles. (2001-06-17)

Active Table-of-Contents Control for Content Navigation and Customization
Foruse.com: The first of a series of applied design studies details the thinking processes involved in designing a solution to a challenging problem in visual and interaction design: how to give classroom teachers instant access to any section of a lesson plan while also providing intuitive control over the contents. (2001-05-27)

Structured Selection with a Multi-Modal Selection List
Foruse.com: The second applied design study in this series describes the evolution of a specialized selection process to support lesson planning by classroom teachers. The solution not only allows rapid selection from hundreds of choices, but facilitates learning and applying best practices in teaching and lesson planning. (2001-05-27)

The Joys of Prototyping
At the heart of any good user-centred design process is the practice of prototyping. By creating and testing interfaces in rough format, designers are able to feed through improvements and feedback from users quickly and easily. This in turn helps to ensure a final product that is an evolved solution, in the sense that it has been through a number of iterations and emerged as fit for the job in question.  (2001-05-27)

An effective results presentation
When presenting information in a tabular format you should, 1. try to make the height of all rows equal 2. get a rid of all graphical elements not carrying useful information 3. use the color coding reasonably 4. use the gray color to dim the less important information.  (2001-05-27)

User interface expert Bruce Tognazzini has plenty to say -- ignore his words at your peril
IBM developerWorks:  Bruce Tognazzini has been at the forefront of the ongoing user interface debate for the past 20 years. He has been a relentless advocate of his own design principles, even when his work has been downplayed or ignored by computer companies that have hired him. This piece surveys his thoughts on the problems of usability, based on his online and offline writings. Since he has never been afraid to express his opinions on the subject, there's plenty of material to work with. (2001-05-06)

Aesthetics and Usability
In this paper, I will discuss the relationship between aesthetics and usability with respect to user interface design as well as specific techniques to insure an aesthetically pleasing design. First I will discuss the concept of aesthetics in general and the role it should play in the human-computer interaction (HCI) discipline. Next I will discuss, at length, various components that make up an aesthetic design and the guidelines for using them. These components are color, typography, icons, layout, and economy of visuals. Then, I will evaluate two applications based upon these components and guidelines. One application is software based, the web site for Schwinn Cycling and Fitness, and the other is hardware based, an automatic teller machine (ATM). Finally I will draw conclusions about the role of aesthetics in usability and conclude the paper. (2001-03-11)

User-Interface Design for a Motorola Vehicle-Navigation System
This paper describes the development of the user interface for a prototype in-car vehicle-navigation system developed for the Motorola ADVANCE project. User interfaces for consumer products beyond the desktop enable users to access complex data and functions without significant display complexity and without extensive novice documentation. Successful solutions to user-interface design consist of partially universal and partially unique solutions to the design of metaphors, mental models, navigation, appearance, and interaction. By managing the user’s experience of familiar structures and processes, the user-interface designer can achieve more compelling forms. The user interface can become more usable and acceptable. Users can become be more productive and satisfied with the product in achieving their personal and professional objectives. (2001-03-11)

Wizened Wizards
Online Learning Magazine: These wizards — interactive dialogue boxes that pop up on screen as you’re installing software or calculating your taxes — are both helpful and controversial. On the one hand, they can guide users through unfamiliar online tasks. This allows people to spend their time doing their jobs rather than having to master arcane or seldom-used skills. On the other hand, some online learning developers see wizards as a threat to their jobs. That’s because wizards make it possible for users to do things without understanding what they’ve done. (2001-03-04)

The Role of Flow in Web Design
The irony of flow in design is that when it is achieved, the design itself often goes unnoticed. Paper clips, suspension bridges, and the computer mouse are all great designs, but are noticed by most only when they fail. This traps the egos of many developers and designers, who might feel frustrated by the lack of recognition for their brilliance. Sometimes you'll see a software product or Web site that goes out of its way to make you aware of what the designer has done for you, or what they think about the world, but this is rarely of benefit to the user. (2001-02-25)

Reading the Look and Feel: Interface Design and Critical Theories
According to this paper: "The informational and experiential schools of interface design are locked in an ongoing, often fierce debate about which is the "right" approach. The informational school sees the experiential approach as too willing to sacrifice usability for flashy distractions. For example, Mullet and Sano consider the use of custom interface objects as "unwarranted innovation": they are "simply decoration attempting to woo the consumer with its seductive splendor", and the result is "slow user acceptance of the environment". The experiential school's supporters consider the informational approach "static", "boring" and "ugly" (Ragus 1999). They feel that an overemphasis on usability has led to interfaces that are not interesting enough to capture the user's attention." (20001-01-28)

User Interface Design
According to this article that summarizes the principles of user interface design: "The most general principle of good user-interface design design is that of transparent interface.  When the student does a CALL lesson, her cognition can be conceptually divided into two parts:  (a) cognition directly involved in the learning task; (b) cognition directed towards the operation of the lesson (management of the interface).  In a well-designed lesson, type (a) processing should be maximized and type (b) minimized.  The interface should become so "transparent" that the user becomes unaware of it." (2001-01-07)

It’s a matter of style – GUI versus the Web
IBM: In the second column in his series on improving application design, Dick Berry focuses on the differences between GUI and Web environments, and reveals effective approaches for each that can enable the best possible user experience. (2001-01-01)

Speaking Metaphorically
CIO Magazine: "An effective metaphor makes a site or system intuitively obvious to the new user by providing comfortable and familiar surroundings that help users quickly absorb the content of a site or adapt to the rules of a system. Take the shopping cart used in online stores, which helps ground users by providing a brick-and-mortar object for them to relate to." (2001-01-01)

User Modeling for Adaptive and Adaptable Software Systems
Bill Kules, University of Maryland: Universal Usability requires that user interfaces accommodate users with a wide variety of expertise and knowledge. Moreover, individual users' needs and preferences change as they use a software system. Systems that guide the user through an evolutionary learning process or adapt the user interface to the user provide a solution to this challenge. This paper introduces the techniques, highlights several examples of systems that implement them and provides guidelines for practitioners who wish to develop adaptive and adaptable interfaces. (2000-12-10)

Five Paper Prototyping Tips
User Interface Engineering: Prototyping is a quick way to incorporate direct feedback from real users into a design. Paper-based prototyping bypasses the time and effort required to create a working, coded user interface. Instead, it relies on very simple tools like paper, scissors, and stickies. Even in applications where new technologies are deployed, paper provides maximum speed and flexibility. (2000-12-10)

A Review of Error Messages
Michael Bolton: Error messages, if they’re posted at all, should convey helpful information and advice--not only for the user, but also for tech support and maintenance programmers. Here are a few things to think about when coding your error-handling routines and designing your error messages. 
Comment: One of the best error messages techniques I've encounter are the one's used in Intuit's Turbo Tax program. These types of messages can be easily implemented in web applications. (2000-12-10)

The Art of Interface Design: What Usability Really Means
Adobe eDesign: In reality, the term "interface design" is fundamentally the humanization of the non-human - the creation of an easy way for people to seamlessly interact with complex objects or technology. Its roots lie deep in computer science, industrial design, cognitive psychology, ergonomics, audiovisual design, animation, and graphic design. (2000-12-03)

Automated Forms: Putting the Customer First
There is a better alternative to the traditional database-focused SDLC approach, which so inevitably leads to stovepipe systems. There is an approach that is far more customer-oriented and, at the same time, far more likely to lead to a rational enterprisewide information management solution. That approach is to deliver to the desktop of the average user the basic set of applications they need to process all three categories of information -- informal/unstructured, formal/relatively unstructured, and formal/highly structured. (2000-12-03)

Effective Error Messages
State-of-the-art usability engineering should eliminate user errors. But in the real world, those users (the majority) who do not read instructions and prefer to 'figure things out as they go' are inevitably going to come unstuck occasionally. In these situations, interface designers must ensure that the feedback provided is as helpful as possible in setting the user back on the right track. (2000-12-03)

The Art of UI Prototyping
Scott Berkun, Microsoft Corporation: "The best reason to prototype is to save time and resources. Relative to the real product, prototypes are easy and inexpensive to create. So, for a minimal investment, you can find usability and design problems and adjust your UI before you invest heavily in the final design and technologies." (2000-11-19)

The user experience: The iceberg analogy of usability
In this article Dick Berry of User Experience Design, IBM Ease of Use Team writes "Developers sometimes ask which aspects of look and feel contribute most to the overall usability of an application or Web site. They are typically surprised when I answer that the "look and feel" aspects aren't the major contributors at all." (2000-10-22)

Making Tips Work
According to this User Interface Engineering article "When you need to communicate to users, put a button the screen called Tips or Hints. When users press it, you give them a couple of very specific pieces of information that help them use the product better." (2000-09-10)

SAP Design Guild
This site contains a number of articles about the various aspects of designing web applications. The site contains an article by Alan Cooper. (2000-09-04)

Interactive Systems Design
This page contains the course notes and information for an introductory course on Interactive Systems Design.  (2000-09-04)

Mental Models and Design
These notes for a class on Human-Computer Interaction define and describe the role of implementation models, mental models and conceptual models in software design. (2000-08-20)

Undo me!
In this Salon Magazine article, Simson Garfinkel, suggests that a consistent undo feature that allows people to recover from accidental deletions is far better than displaying and "Are you sure?" message. (2000-06-04)

User Interface Design for Programmers
According to the author of this online book on user interface design, "There is a rational way to think about user interfaces with some simple, logical rules that you can apply anywhere to improve the interfaces of the programs you work on."  (2000-04-16)

Metaphors We Compute By
In fact, the more metaphors you use, the better. I'm giving this lecture, therefore, to encourage you all to think about the metaphors you use in talking about computers, and to consider broadening your repertoire. (via webword) (2000-03-12)

Defining Interaction Design: An Interview with Alan Cooper
According to Alan Cooper: "Look and Feel stuff is Interface Design. It's all very stylistic. It's the color that you paint your walls. Interaction Design is about the Architecture. It's what kind of building are we building. What functions does it support." (2000-02-27)

DoD Human Computer Interface Style Guide
"Good software design requires selecting and using standard practices for various aspects of an application or system design. This helps ensure consistency of appearance and behavior among applications within a system and develops designs to enhance human performance." (2000-02-27)

Principles of good GUI Design
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have become the user interface of choice. Yet despite the GUI's popularity, surprisingly few programs exhibit good interface design. Moreover, finding information explaining what constitutes a good and intuitive interface is exceedingly difficult. In this article, I describe the basic rules for all good interfaces -the cardinal dos and don'ts. (2000-02-20)

Summary of The Humane Interface
When we set about learning any interface feature that is new to us, we proceed in two phases, the first of which gradually grades into the second. In the first, or learning, phase we are actively aware of the new feature, and seek to understand and master it. If that feature is well–designed, and if we use it repeatedly, we eventually enter the desirable second, or automatic, phase, in which we have formed a habit, and use the feature habitually, without thought or conscious effort. (2000-02-06)

Paper Prototyping Kit
The kit contains scaled GUI and Web screens, printed with a light grid designed to facilitate location of controls (such as buttons and fields) but to drop out when photocopied. The screens are colour printed on A3 paper (approximately equivalent to US Ledger/Tabloid size). (2000-01-16)

Tim's User Interface Guidelines
"While this is a short, general list, if you understand and can articulate these concepts to others through your information design, architecture and visual design efforts, the web could be a very different place than it is today." (1999-12-27)

A Review of Error Messages
"Error messages are displayed by programs in response to unusual or exceptional conditions that can’t be rectified by the program itself. A well-written program should post very few error messages indeed; instead, absolutely whenever possible, the program should cope with the problem gracefully and continue without bothering the customer. By this yardstick, of course, most programs are poorly written." (1999-12-12)

Designing a More Usable World
This web site is maintained by Trace, "...a research center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison which focuses on making off the shelf technologies and systems like computers, the Internet, and information kiosks more accessible for everyone through the process known as universal, or accessible design." (1999-12-05)

Microsoft Accessibility Web Site
This site contains information about designing and developing accessible software and web sites. (1999-12-05)

How to Avoid Foolish Consistency
According to this article by Scott Berkun of Microsoft, "People don't like to learn things. If they take the time to learn something, they expect to be able to apply that knowledge in many places. It follows that good designers conserve the number of things users need to learn to get stuff done" The article goes on to point out that consistency can be a bad thing when it does not serve a specific purpose. (1999-09-18)

Do Interface Standards Stifle Design Creativity?
According to the Jakob Nielsen essay "Since the dawn of time (1984), we have known that consistency is one of the strongest contributors to usability. The Macintosh was based on a detailed book of Apple Human Interface Guidelines that were followed by almost all applications. One of the main benefits of the Mac (and later Windows) over earlier systems was the resulting consistency that made it possible for users to use software right out of the box." (1999-09-05)

The Importance of Designing Usable Systems
According to this article by Susan Dray; "Developers often see the functionality of a system as separate from the UI, with the UI as an add-on. Users, however, do not typically make distinctions between the underlying functionality and the way it is presented in the UI. To users, the UI is the system. Therefore, if the UI is usable, they will see the entire system as usable." (1999-08-22)

The Role of the Technical Writer in User Interface Design
This article by LeRoy Miller presents sixteen concrete ways that technical writers can help improve the interface (1999-08-22)

The Importance of Simplicity
According to this article by Scott Berkun of Microsoft "Web sites and software often compete with each other based on the features they provide. The popular assumption is that the more features a product has, the better it will be. The truth is that features improve a product only if they are actually used by the customer. In most cases the proliferation of features in products creates more complexity than value" (1999-07-13)

14 Principles of Polite Apps
In this article, Alan Cooper, the author of The Inmates are Running the Asylum and About Face,  argues that "software should respond to your obvious needs, not just your commands." He contents that "If the software is stingy with information, obscures its process, forces the user to hunt for common functions, and is quick to blame the user for its own failings, the user dislikes the software and has an unpleasant experience. On the other hand, if the interaction is respectful, generous, and helpful, the user likes the software and has a pleasant experience." (1999-06-12)

Usability Issues in Agent Applications:What Should the Designer be Aware of
This article examines the issues and implications for the use of agents, like the Microsoft Office Assistant.  The article provides some guidelines for designing the agent interaction. (1999-06-12)

Interface Design and Optimization of Reading of Continuous Text
This article summarizes the research on reading online text. (1999-06-12)

Ameritech Graphical Look and Feel Standards
According to the website introduction: "The purposes of the Ameritech Graphical Look and Feel Standards (aka design guide) are twofold. First, it provides a basis for a consistent user interface look and feel across Ameritech applications and platforms. Second, it is the initial attempt to integrate research on user interface design directly into the selection and usage of interface objects found in user interface libraries and toolkits." (Aug-17-97)

Attributes & Behaviors of Performance-Centered Systems
This Adobe Acrobat file contains an article, by Gloria Gery, that was originally published in Performance Improvement Quarterly, Vol. 8. No. 1. It describes the features, behaviors and attributes of a performance support systems or performance-centered software application.

COMMON GROUND:A Pattern Language for Human-Computer Interface Design
"The patterns contained in this work address the general problem of how to design a complex interactive software artifact.  They are intended to be used by people who design traditional user interfaces, Web sites, on-line documentation, video games, and other such things." (Mar-20-99)

Cut and Paste your way to Powerful Prototypes This article, by Steve Jefferson, discusses how paper prototyping techniques were used to develop several web site. The article include information about involving users in the paper prototyping process and the time it took to develop a design.  (Apr-04-98)

Designing the User Interface
This site supplements Ben Schneiderman's book "Designing the User Interface". The site contains many links to related websites, articles and HCI course information. The links are organized by Chapters in the book.  (Feb-07-99)

EPSS Interface Design
This EPSScentral article examines some of the many interface design issues one should consider when creating an EPSS. This is a work in progress.

An EPSS Interface that people can use
This online article by Dr. Beatriz Beltrán provides ideas and information about designing a user interface for an EPSS. It includes a design checklist for evaluating an interface.

For Use
This contains information about the book "Software for Use" by Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood.  According to the authors, the site and book is "... for practitioners of usage-centered design. It's about software usability, user interface design, user role models, use cases and task modeling, content and navigation models, user interface architecture, and usability inspections." (Mar-06-99)

GUIguide Enterprise Guidelines
"GUIguide provides you with world-leading graphical user interface design standards. It enables your developers to access design guidelines for both GUI and web-based applications from their desktops using any standard web browser."   (Feb-07-99)

GUI Testing Checklist
This site contains a very extensive and detailed GUI testing checklist. The site also contains links to other GUI testing resources.  (Sep-02-98)

Interface Hall of Fame and Shame
This site contains examples of both innovative and usable interface designs as well as those that contain some form of usability problem. (Sep-04-97).

The Interaction Design Patterns Page
This page contains information about resources related to pattern languages for interaction design (of which user interface design is a subset), and a few links to more general papers that may be of use to interaction designers. (Apr-18-99)

Microsoft's User Experience and Interface Design Resources
This page contains links to the Windows 95/NT design guidelines and a bi-monthly column on UI design. (May-16-99)

Organizing Information Spatially
According to the author of this online article, Kevin Mullet, "By carefully adjusting the qualities of individual elements and the configuration as a whole, the designer can manipulate the order in which elements are perceived, the relative importance assigned to each, and the relationships between elements inferred by the viewer".  (Jul-26-98)

Usability Heuristics
This page contains a brief description of the ten factors that affect the usability of a computer program. This list was developed by Jakob Nielsen. (Mar-12-97)

User-Centered Revolution
This article describes the difference between system-centered and user-centered design approaches. It also describes some key factors in user-centered system and list the category of errors that users typically make. (Mar-12-97)

User Interface Design According to the author the information in this site is intended to be an introduction to the issues involved in designing user interfaces. It draws heavily on material that is already in existence and is a summarization and synthesis of those resources. (Mar-02-98)

User Interface Design Tips
This Adobe Acrobat article contains numerous tips on the process of designing and developing a user interface. (Jan-15-99)

User Interface papers by David Benyon
This page contains a list of articles authored or co-authored by David Benyon. The articles are about Adaptive and Intelligent Interfaces, Task Analysis and System Design. All the articles are in the Adobe PDF format. (Jan-17-98)

Vertical Research Inc. WebSite
This well designed site contain some useful information. resources and links about human computer interaction and interface design. (Mar-23-97)

Task/Transaction System Design Model
This article, by Bill Miller, describes a basic design model that was used to develop an awarding winning electronic performance support system. This page contains several screens shoots and diagrams that will take a while to download.

Yahoo - Interface Design Index
This Yahoo index page contains links to various sites with information about interface design. (Mar-20-99)