chapter 7

Design rules
Design rules
Design rules are rules a designer can follow in order to increase the
usability of the eventual software product. We can classify these rules
along two dimensions, based on the rule’s authority and generality.

-Authority: It means whether or not the rule must be followed in design

or whether it is only suggested.

-Generality: It means whether the rule can be applied to many design

situations or whether it is focussed on a more limited application
situation.

Rules also vary in their level of abstraction, with some abstracting away
from the detail of the design solution and others being quite specific. We
will consider a number of different types of design rules.
Types of design rules
•  principles
–  abstract design rules
–  low authority
–  high generality
•  standards
–  specific design rules
–  high authority

increasing generality
–  Low generality
•  guidelines
–  specific design rules
–  lower authority

increasing authority
Principles
-  Principles are derived from knowledge of the psychological,
computational and sociological aspects of the problem domains and are
largely independent of the technology. They can therefore be applied
widely but are not so useful for specific design advice.e.g

1. The principle of user profiling: Know who your user is.

2. The principle of metaphor: Borrow behaviours from systems
familiar to your users.
3. The principle of feature exposure: Let the user see clearly what
functions are available
4. The principle of state visualization: Changes in behaviour should
be reflected in the appearance of the program
5. The principle of shortcuts: Provide both concrete (novice) and
abstract ways(expert) of getting a task done
Standards
-  A designer will have less of a need to know the underlying theory for
applying a standard. However, since standards carry a much higher level
of authority, it is more important that the theory underlying them be
correct or sound. They can be

-In-house e.g. style guides/check lists. Tabs & Indenting->

Tab characters should not be used in code. All indentation should be done
with 4 space characters.

-Proprietary i.e. developed & established by one particular

manufacturer, e.g. Mac OS X, MS Windows

-De facto & De jure de facto standards can become de jure i.e. formal,
universally agreed, subject to legislation e.g HTML (computer file format)
started as "de facto" (1993-1995) and became the "de jure" standard
(1995-present-day)-Wiki
Guidelines
-  Guidelines are less abstract and often more technology oriented,
but as they are also general, it is important for a designer to know what
theoretical evidence there is to support them.e.g
-  Android User Interface Guidelines
-  Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines
-  Apple OS X Human Interface Guidelines
Principles to support usability
The most abstract design rules are principles, which can be applied to
the design of an interactive system in order to promote its usability.
The principles we present are first divided into three main categories:

Learnability
The ease with which new users can begin effective interaction and
achieve maximal performance

Flexibility
The multiplicity of ways the user and system exchange information

Robustness
The level of support provided to the user in determining successful
achievement and assessment of goal-directed behaviour
Principles of learnability
It concerns the features of the interactive system that allow
novice users to understand how to use it initially and then how to
attain a maximal level of performance. Table below contains a
summary of the specific principles that support learnability.
Principles of learnability
1.  Predictability
1.  Determining effect of future actions based on past interaction
history
–  Example, imagine we have created a complex picture using a MS
Paint. We leave the picture for a few days and then go back to
change it around a bit. We are allowed to select certain objects for
editing by positioning the mouse over the object and clicking a
mouse button to highlight it.
–  Can We tell what the set of selectable objects are? Can we
determine which area of the screen belongs to which of these
objects, especially if some objects overlap? Predictability of selection
in this example depends on how much of the history of the creation
of the visual image is necessary in order for us to determine what
happens when you click on the mouse button.
–  This notion of predictability deals with the user’s ability to determine
the effect of operations on the system. Another form is Operation
visibility and refers to how the user is shown the availability of
operations that can be performed next. This principle supports the
superiority in humans of recognition over recall.
Principles of learnability
2. Synthesizability
–  Assessing the effect of past actions on current system state.
–  When an operation changes some aspect of the internal state, it
is important that the change is seen by the user. The principle
of honesty relates to the ability of the user interface to provide
an observable and informative account of such change.

–  Example: We moved a file in Command language interfaces

and visual desktop interface. In a command language system,
we would typically have to remember the destination directory
and then ask to see the contents of that directory in order to
verify that the file has been moved (in fact, you would also have
to check that the file is no longer in its original directory to
determine that it has been moved and not copied).
Principles of learnability
2. Synthesizability (cntd)
In a visual desktop interface, a visual representation (or icon) of the
file is dragged from its original directory and placed in its destination
directory where it remains visible (assuming the destination folder is
selected to reveal its contents). In this case, the user need not
expend any more effort to assess the result of the move operation.
The visual desktop is immediately honest.
Principles of learnability
3. Familiarity
–  How prior knowledge applies to new system
–  For a new user, the familiarity of an interactive system measures
the relation between the user’s existing knowledge and the
knowledge required for effective interaction. Familiarity has to
do with a user’s first impression of the system.
–  For example, when word processors were originally introduced
the analogy between the word processor and a typewriter was
intended to make the new technology more immediately
accessible to those who had little experience with the former but
a lot of experience with the latter. An advantage of a metaphor,
such as the typewriter metaphor for word processing
described above, is precisely captured by familiarity.
Principles of learnability
4. Generalizability
–  Users often try to extend their knowledge of specific interaction
behavior to situations that are similar but previously unencountered.
The generalizability of an interactive system supports this activity.

–  Generalization can occur within a single application or across a

variety of applications. For example, in a graphical drawing package
that draws a circle as a constrained form of ellipse, we would want
the user to generalize that a square can be drawn as a constrained
rectangle.
–  A good example of generalizability across a variety of applications
can be seen in multi-windowing systems that attempt to provide cut/
paste/copy operations to all applications in the same way. One of the
main advantages of standards and programming style guides is that
they increase generalizability across a wide variety of applications
within the same environment.
Principles of learnability
5. Consistency
–  Consistency relates to the likeness in behaviour arising from similar
situations or similar task objectives. Probably the most widely
mentioned principle in the literature on user interface design.

–  Many other principles can be ‘reduced’ to qualified instances of

consistency.

–  Consistency can be expressed in terms of the form of input

expressions or output responses with respect to the meaning of
actions in some conceptual model of the system. For example, before
the introduction of explicit arrow keys, some word processors used the
relative position of keys on the keyboard (for example, the keys e, x,
s and d, respectively) to indicate directionality for operations (for
example, to move one character to the left, right, up or down).
Principles of flexibility
Flexibility refers to the multiplicity of ways in which the end-user and the
system exchange information. We identify several principles that contribute
to the flexibility of interaction, and these are
Principles of flexibility
1. Dialogue initiative
–  When considering the interaction between user and system as a dialog
between partners it is important to consider which partner has the
initiative in the conversation. Who controls the dialogue?
system preemptive
–  System initiates all dialog and user simply responds to requests for
information. For example, a modal dialog box prohibits the user from
interacting with the system in any way that does not direct input to the
box.e.g modal dialog boxes are system preemptive.
Principles of flexibility
1.  Dialogue initiative(cntd)
user preemptive
–  The user is free to initiate any action towards the system. The system
may control the dialog to the extent that it prohibits the user from
initiating any other desired communication concerning the current task
or some other task the user would like to perform.e.g direct
manipulation is user preamptive.

–  From the user’s perspective, a system-driven interaction hinders

flexibility whereas a user-driven interaction favours it. In general, we
want to maximize the user’s ability to preempt the system and
minimize the system’s ability to preempt the user.
Principles of flexibility (cntd)
2. MultiThreading
Multi-threading of the user–system dialog allows for interaction to
support more than one task at a time.

–  Multi-modality of a dialog is related to multi-threading and has two

dimensions.

–  First, we can consider how the separate modalities are combined to

form a single input or output expression. Multiple channels may be
available, but any one expression may be restricted to just one
channel (keyboard or audio, for example). As an example, to open a
window the user can choose between a double click on an icon, a
keyboard shortcut, or saying ‘open window’.

–  Secondly, a single expression can be formed by a mixing of channels.

Examples of such fused modality are error warnings, which usually
contain a textual message accompanied by an audible beep.
Principles of flexibility (cntd)
3. Task Migratability
- How easily functions can be moved between user and system
–  Concerns with transfer of control for execution of tasks between
system and user. It should be possible for the user or system to pass
the control of a task over to the other or promote the task from a
completely internalized one to a shared and cooperative venture.
Hence, a task that is internal to one can become internal to the other
or shared between the two partners.

–  Spell-checking is a good example of the need for task migratability.

Equipped with a dictionary, you are perfectly able to check your
spelling by reading through the entire paper and correcting mistakes
as you spot them. This task is perfectly suited to automation, as the
computer can check words against its own list of acceptable spellings.
It is not desirable, however, to leave this task completely to the
discretion of the computer, as most computerized dictionaries do not
handle proper names correctly, nor can they distinguish between
correct and unintentional duplications of words. In those cases, the
task is handed over to the user. The spell-check is best performed in
such a cooperative way.
Principles of flexibility (cntd)
4. Substitutivity
–  Allowing equivalent values of input and output to be substituted for
each other.
–  For example, in considering the form of an input expression to
determine the margin for a letter, we may want to enter the value in
either inches or centimeters.
–  We may also want to input the value explicitly (say 1.5 inches) or you
may want to enter a calculation which produces the right input value
(you know the width of the text is 6.5 inches and the width of the
paper is 8.5 inches and you want the left margin to be twice as large
as the right margin, so you enter 2/3 (8.5 − 6.5) inches).
–  This input substitutivity contributes towards flexibility by allowing the
user to choose whichever form best suits the needs of the moment. By
avoiding unnecessary calculations in the user’s head, substitutivity can
minimize user errors and cognitive effort.
Principles of flexibility (cntd)
4. Substitutivity(cntd)
- e.g don’t force users to refer to objects by name if they can point to them
Principles of flexibility (cntd)
5. Customizability
–  Customizability is the modifiability of the user interface by the user or
the system. We are concerned with the automatic modification that the
system would make based on its knowledge of the user. We distinguish
between the user-initiated and system-initiated modification, referring
to the former as adaptability and the latter as adaptivity.

–  Adaptability refers to the user’s ability to adjust the form of input and
output. This customization could be very limited, with the user only
allowed to adjust the position of soft buttons on the screen or redefine
command names.

–  Adaptivity is automatic customization of the user interface by the

system. A system can be trained to recognize the behaviour of an
expert or novice and accordingly adjust its dialog control or help
system automatically to match the needs of the current user. This is in
contrast with a system that would require the user to classify himself
as novice or expert at the beginning of a session.
Principles of flexibility (cntd)
5. Customizability