- 1) Things that look different should
act different.
- 2) If it is not needed, it's not needed.
- 3) The information for the decision needs
to be there when the decision
is needed.
- 4) The user should control the system. The
system shouldn't control
the user. The user is the boss, and the system should show it.
- 5) The idea is to empower the user, not
speed up the system.
- 6) Don't overload the user's buffers.
- 7) Keep it simple.
- 8) Things that look the same should act
the same.
- 9) The user should be able to do what the
user wants to do.
- 10) Every action should have a reaction.
- 11) Everything in its place, and a place
for everything.
- 12) Let people shape the system to themselves,
and paint it with
their own personality.
- 13) Error messages should actually mean something
to the user,
and tell the user how to fix the problem.
- 14) The best journey is the one with the
fewest steps. Shorten the distance
between the user and their goal.
- 15) Everyone makes mistakes, so every mistake
should be fixable.
- 16) The more you do something, the easier
it should be to do.
- 17) Cute is not a good adjective for systems.
- 18) Keep it neat. Keep it organized.
- 19) Consistency, consistency, consistency.
- 20) The user should always know what is
happening.
- 21) Minimize the need for a mighty memory.
- 22) Know they user, and YOU are not thy
user.
- 23) If I made an error, at least let me
finish my thought before I have
to fix it.
- 24) Design for regular people and the real
world.
- 25) Eliminate unnecessary decisions, and
illuminate the rest.
- 26) You should always know how to find out
what to do next.
- 27) If I made an error, let me know about
it before I get into REAL
trouble.
- 28) Even experts are novices at some point.
Provide help.
- 29) Provide a way to bail out and start
over.
- 30) Don't let people accidentally shoot
themselves.
- 31) Color is information.
- 32) The user should be in a good mood when
done.
- 33) The fault is not in thyself, but in
thy system.
- 34) To know the system is to love it.
- 35) Deliver a model and stick to it.
- 36) Follow platform conventions.
- 37) Make it hard for people to make errors.
- 38) The system status (i.e., what's going
on should always be visible.
- 39) Accommodate individual differences among
users through automatic
adaptation or user tailoring of the interface.
- 40) Make it easy for a beginner to become
an expert.
- 41) No you can't just explain it in the
manual.
- 42) Provide user documentation that is easy
to search, focused on the
user's task, lists concrete steps to be carried out, and is not too large.
- 43) The system should speak the users' language,
following real-world
conventions.
- 44) Instructions for use of a system should
be visible or easily
retrievable.
- 45) What does marketing think it wants?
Ok, now how do we show them
they're wrong?
- 46) What does management think it wants?
Ok, now how do we show them
they're wrong?
- 47) Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
- 48) Users don't know what they want, and
users can't always say what
they know.
- 49) Roll the videotape.
- 50) Common sense is an uncommon commodity.
- 51) Make objects, actions, and options visible.
- 52) Data drives good design.
- 53) Help users develop a conceptual
representation of the structure
of the system.
- 54) Minimize the amount of information a
user must maintain in short-term
memory.
- 55) It's a jungle. Be careful out there.
- 56) People should not have to remember
information across a dialogue.
- 57) Make it impossible to make errors that
will get the user into REAL
trouble.
- 58) Dialogues should not contain information
that is irrelevant or rarely
needed.
- 59) Testing, testing, testing.
- 60) Keep the user mental workload within
acceptable limits.
- 61) Minimize the amount of information recoding
that is necessary.
- 62) Minimize the difference in dialogue
both within and across interfaces.
- 63) An ounce of good design is worth a pound
of technical support.
- 64) Provide the user with feedback and
error-correction capabilities.
- 65) So how is this better than what the
competition is doing?
- 66) Provide good error messages that are
expressed in plain language,
precisely indicate the probem, and constructively suggest a solution.
- 67) Whadya mean, they're not all computer
scientists?
- 68) Support undo and redo.
- 69) Different words, situations, or actions
should result in different
things happening.
- 70) The best user interface is one the user
doesn't notice.