According to Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood
·
The structure principle:
Design should organize the user interface purposefully, in meaningful and
useful ways based on clear, consistent models that are apparent and
recognizable to users, putting related things together and separating unrelated
things, differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble
one another. The structure principle is concerned with overall user interface
architecture.
·
The simplicity principle: The design should make simple, common tasks easy,
communicating clearly and simply in the user's own language, and providing good
shortcuts that are meaningfully related to longer procedures.
·
The visibility principle: The design should make all needed options and materials for a
given task visible without distracting the user with extraneous or redundant
information. Good designs don't overwhelm users with alternatives or confuse
with unneeded information.
·
The feedback principle:
The design should keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of
state or condition, and errors or exceptions that are relevant and of interest
to the user through clear, concise, and unambiguous language familiar to users.
·
The tolerance principle:
The design should be flexible and tolerant, reducing the cost of mistakes and
misuse by allowing undoing and redoing, while also preventing errors wherever
possible by tolerating varied inputs and sequences and by interpreting all
reasonable actions.
·
The reuse principle:
The design should reuse internal and external components and behaviors,
maintaining consistency with purpose rather than merely arbitrary consistency,
thus reducing the need for users to rethink and remember.
According to Jef Raskin in his book, The Human Interface there
are two laws of user interface design, based on the fictional laws or robotics created by Isaac Asimov
·
First Law: A computer shall not
harm your work or, through inactivity, allow your work to come to harm.
·
Second Law: A computer shall not
waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary.
2) What is the elements of the interface design ?
