Design Analysis Studio

Keep users informed through appropriate feedback within reasonable time

Speak the users' language with familiar concepts and conventions

Provide clear exits and support undo/redo for user mistakes

Follow platform conventions so users don't wonder about meanings

Design to prevent problems before they occur

Minimize memory load by making options visible and accessible

Provide accelerators for experts while supporting novices

Avoid irrelevant or rarely needed information in dialogues

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Provide searchable help focused on user tasks when needed

Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar situations.

Recognize the needs of diverse users and design for plasticity, transforming content.

For every user action, there should be system feedback.

Sequences of actions should have a beginning, middle, and end.

Design the system so that users cannot make serious errors.

This feature relieves anxiety, since the user knows that errors can be undone.

Experienced operators strongly desire the sense that they are in charge of the system.

The limitation of human information processing in short-term memory requires that displays be kept simple.

Bring to the user all the information and tools needed for each step of the process.

The computer, interface, and task environment all "belong" to the user, but with user-control comes responsibility.

Whenever you use color to convey information in the interface, you should also use clear, secondary cues to convey the information.

The most important consistency is consistency with user expectations.

Defaults should be easy to "blow away" and should never cause errors.

Look at the user's productivity, not the computer's.

Give users well-marked roads and landmarks, then let them shift into four-wheel drive.

The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.

Human-interface objects can be seen, heard, felt, or otherwise perceived.

Optimize the user's experience of latency.

Limit the trade-off between learnability and usability.

Choose metaphors well, as they enable users to instantly grasp the finest details of the conceptual model.

Ensure that users never lose their work.

Text that must be read should have high contrast.

Because many of our interactions with the real world involve state, we have developed a natural ability to track it.

Avoid invisible navigation.

Free cognitive resources for high-level tasks. Eliminate mental calculations, estimations, comparisons, and unnecessary thinking.

Display data in a manner that is clear and obvious.

Reduce cognitive load by bringing together lower level data into a higher level summation.

Use a familiar framework (e.g. schemas, metaphors, everyday terms) for easier interpretation.

Display names and labels should be context-dependent.

Group data logically within a screen and consistently across screens.

Reduce the time spent assimilating raw data. Make appropriate use of color and graphics.

Do not require the user to remember information from one screen to use on another.

Design should align with how users expect a system to work.

Maintain consistent relationships between controls and their effects.

How completely and accurately the work or experience is completed or goals reached.

How quickly this work can be completed.

How well the interface draws the user into the interaction and how pleasant and satisfying it is to use.

How well the product prevents errors and can help the user recover from mistakes that do occur.

How well the product supports both the initial orientation and continued learning throughout the complete lifetime of use.