What are design principles?
High-level guidelines to help ensure software designed is of a high standard.
What are 3 characteristics of design principles?
- Universal truths
- Apply across disciplines
- Increase probability of success
What are 3 characteristics of design patterns?
- Specific methods/approaches
- Bring design principles to life
- Specific patterns for software
What is perceivability?
A user can look at something and figure out what it does and how they can use it.
What 3 questions should you be able to answer to know if your product is perceivable?
- What does it do?
- What do I need to do?
- What do I do first?
What is predictability?
A user knows what they will get and how long it will take before they invest their time.
What 4 things does predictability tell a user?
- How long it takes
- What they’ll get
- What they need to do
- What will happen next
What is an affordance?
A visual clue of how a product/control should be used/operated.
What 3 things do affordances do?
- Make it obvious how a product works
- Make it clear what to do next
- Assist learnability
What are conventions?
Established ways of doing things, familiar to users and save time.
What are constraints?
Simple mental aides keeping users on a specific task by limiting alternatives
What 5 things can you include in your software design to make it forgiving?
- Use strong affordances
- Allow reversibility of actions
- Give warnings
- Give confirmations
- Help users
What is Hick’s Law?
Suggests the time it takes to make a decision depends on the number of options presented. The more options, the longer the time.
What is Fitts’ Law?
Faster to hit larger targets that are closer to you than to hit smaller targets that are further away.
What does progressive disclosures say to do?
- Don’t present all the information all the time
- Reduce complexity
- Only present necessary information to complete a task
Why do progressive disclosures work?
- Prevents information overload
- Helps user make decisions and actions
- Smooths the flow
