GUI design 9 rules

Basic Principle 1: Focus on the users and their tasks, not on the technology

Basic Principle 2: Consider function first, presentation later

Basic Principle 3: Conform to the users’ view of the task

Basic Principle 4: Design for the common case

Basic Principle 5: Don’t complicate the users’ task

Basic Principle 6: Facilitate learning

Basic Principle 7: Deliver information, not just data

Basic Principle 8: Design for responsiveness

Basic Principle 9: Try it out on users, then fix it!

The term “usable” means more than just easy to learn. Ease of learning is an
important component of usability, but it is the least important of three components.
To be usable, a product also has to be quick to use and relatively error-free.
Most importantly, it must do what the user wants. Keep this in mind as you read
this book. Usability refers to three different components: the product does what
you need it to do, it does that quickly and safely, and, last, it is easy to learn. Violins
are hard to learn, but they have survived for hundreds of years with little change
because they supply the other two more important components of usability.

What does “focus on users and their tasks” mean? It means starting a software
development project by answering several questions:
■ For whom is this software being designed? Who are the intended users?
Who are the intended customers (not necessarily the users)?
■ What is the software for? What activity is it intended to support? What
problems will it help users solve? What value will it provide?
■ What problems do the intended users have now? What do they like and
dislike about the way they work now?
■ What are the skills and knowledge of the intended users? Are they motivated
to learn? How? Are there different classes of users, with different skills,
knowledge, and motivation?
■ How do users conceptualize the data that the software will manage?
■ What are the intended users’ preferred ways of working? How will the
software fit into those ways? How will it change them?