Vignan Degree College, Kadapa

Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN

AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

User Interface Design:

 It will create an effective communication medium between a human and
a computer.
 User interface is the front end application view to which user interacts in
order to use the software.
 User Interface(UI) is part of software design and provides fundamental
platform for user computer interaction.
 UI can be graphics, text-based, audio-video based depending upon the
hardware and software combination.
 a software engineer designs the User interface by applying iterative
process that draws on widely accepted design principles.
 The software becomes more popular if its user interface is:
 Attractive
 Simple to use
 Responsive in short time
 Clear to understand
 Consistent on all interface screens
There are two types of User Interface:
1. Command Line Interface: Command Line Interface provides a command
prompt, where the user types the command and feeds to the system. The
user needs to remember the syntax of the command and its use.
2. Graphical User Interface: Graphical User Interface provides the simple
interactive interface to interact with the system. GUI can be a
combination of both hardware and software. Using GUI, user interprets
the software.

By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

User Interface Design Process:

The Following diagram illustrate the UI design process
Users, task, Environmental analysis, and modeling:

 User Interface Design begins with identification of user, task, and

environmental requirements.
 The focus is based on the profile of users who will interact with the
system, i.e. understanding, skill and knowledge, type of user, etc.,
based on the user’s profile users are made into categories.
 From each category requirements are gathered, and developer will
understand how to develop interface design based on requirements.
Interface Design:
 Once user tasks have been identified, The second phase begins with
Interface design.
 These form the basis for the creation of screen layouts that depict
graphical design and placement of icons, definition of descriptive
screen text, specification and titling for windows and specification of
major and minor menu items.
Interface Construction and Implementation:
By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

 The implementation activity begins with the creation of prototype

(model) that enables usage scenarios to be evaluated. 
 Iterative design process continues a user interface toolkit that allows
the creation of windows, menu, etc., can be used to complete design
interface.
Interface validation:
This phase focuses on testing the interface. The interface should be in
such a way that it should be able to perform tasks correctly and it
should be able to handle a variety of tasks.
Interface Design Principles
A collection of principles for improving the quality of your user interface
design. These principles are

 The structure principle. Your design should organize the user

interface purposefully, in meaningful and useful ways based on clear,
consistent models that are apparent and recognizable to users,
putting related things together and separating unrelated things,
differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble
one another. The structure principle is concerned with your overall
user interface architecture.
 The simplicity principle. Your design should make simple, common
tasks simple to do, communicating clearly and simply in the user’s
own language, and providing good shortcuts that are meaningfully
related to longer procedures.
 The visibility principle. Your design should keep all needed options
and materials for a given task visible without distracting the user with
extraneous or redundant information. Good designs don’t overwhelm
By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

users with too many alternatives or confuse them with unneeded

information.
 The feedback principle. Your design should keep users informed of
actions or interpretations, changes of state or condition, and errors or
exceptions that are relevant and of interest to the user through clear,
concise, and unambiguous language familiar to users.
 The tolerance principle. Your design should be flexible and tolerant,
reducing the cost of mistakes and misuse by allowing undoing and
redoing, while also preventing errors wherever possible by tolerating
varied inputs and sequences and by interpreting all reasonable
actions reasonable.
 The reuse principle. Your design should reuse internal and external
components and behaviors, maintaining consistency with purpose
rather than merely arbitrary consistency, thus reducing the need for
users to rethink and remember

By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

The Golden Rules:

There are three Important rules we have to follow to create a good user
interface design. these rules are called as Golden Rules of User Interface
design. The following are the golden rules stated by Theo Mandel that must
be followed during the design of the interface.
1. Place the user in control
2. Reduce the user’s memory load
3. Make the interface consistent.
1. Place the user in control:
 Define the interaction modes in such a way that does not force the
user into unnecessary or undesired actions: The user should be able
to easily enter and exit the mode with little or no effort.
 Provide For Flexible Interaction: create User interface with different
mechanisms (keyboard commands, mouse, touch screen, etc.) for
different users.
 Allow user interaction to be interruptible and undoable: When a
user is doing a sequence of actions the user must be able to interrupt
the sequence to do some other work without losing the work that
had been done. The user should also be able to do undo operation.
 Streamline interaction as skill level advances and allow the
interaction to be customized: Advanced or highly skilled user should
be provided a chance to customize the interface as user wants which
allows different interaction mechanisms so that user doesn’t feel
bored while using the same interaction mechanism.
 Hide technical internals from casual users: The user should not be
aware of the internal technical details of the system. He should
interact with the interface just to do his work.

By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

 Design for direct interaction with objects that appear on screen: The
user should be able to use the objects and manipulate the objects
that are present on the screen to perform a necessary task. By this,
the user feels easy to control over the screen.
2. Reduce the user’s memory load:
 Reduce demand on short-term memory: When users are involved in
some complex tasks the demand on short-term memory is significant.
So the interface should be designed in such a way to reduce the
remembering of previously done actions, given inputs and results.
 Establish meaningful defaults: Always initial set of defaults should be
provided to the average user, if a user needs to add some new
features then he should be able to add the required features.
 Define shortcuts that are intuitive: Mnemonics should be used by the
user. Mnemonics means the keyboard shortcuts to do some action on
the screen.
 The visual layout of the interface should be based on a real-world
metaphor: Anything you represent on a screen if it is a metaphor for
real-world entity then users would easily understand.
 Disclose information in a progressive fashion: The interface should
be organized hierarchically i.e. on the main screen the information
about the task, an object or some behavior should be presented first
at a high level of abstraction. More detail should be presented after
the user indicates interest with a mouse pick.
3. Make the interface consistent:
 Allow the user to put the current task into a meaningful context:
Many interfaces have dozens of screens. So it is important to provide
indicators consistently so that the user know about the doing work.
The user should also know from which page has navigated to the
current page and from the current page where can navigate.
By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

 Maintain consistency across a family of applications: The

development of some set of applications all should follow and
implement the same design, rules so that consistency is maintained
among applications.
 If past interactive models have created user expectations do not
make changes unless there is a compelling reason.

Human-Computer Interface (Interaction)

 Human Computer Interface (HCI) was previously known as the man-

machine studies or man-machine interaction.
 It deals with the design, execution and assessment of computer systems
and related phenomenon that are for human use.
 HCI can be used in all disciplines wherever there is a possibility of
computer installation.
 HCI can be implemented with distinctive importance are mentioned below
Computer Science − For application design and engineering.
Psychology − For application of theories and analytical purpose.
Sociology − For interaction between technology and organization.
Industrial Design − For interactive products like mobile phones,
microwave oven, etc.
 The world’s leading organization in HCI is ACM − SIGCHI, which stands
for Association for Computer Machinery − Special Interest Group on
Computer–Human Interaction.
 The main objective of HCI is to learn the ways of designing user-friendly
interfaces or interactions.
By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

o ways to design and access interactive systems

o ways to reduce design time through cognitive system and task
models
o procedures and heuristics for interactive systems.
Human Computer Interface Design
 human-computer interface design which were designed to make it easier
to accomplish things with a computer. 
 Human-Computer Interface Design seeks to discover the most efficient
way to design understandable electronic messages
Shneiderman's Principles of Human-Computer Interface Design:
Recognize Diversity:
 In order to recognize diversity, you, the designer, must take into account
the type of user frequenting your system, ranging from novice user,
knowledgeable but intermittent user and expert frequent user.
 Each type of user expects the screen layout to accommodate their desires,
novices needing extensive help, experts wanting to get where they want to
go as quickly as possible.
 Accommodating both styles on the same page can be quite challenging. 

You Should Use the Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design:

1. Strive for consistency

o consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar

situations
o identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help
screens

By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

o consistent color, layout, capitalization, fonts, and so on should be

employed throughout.
2. Enable frequent users to use shortcuts
o to increase the pace of interaction use abbreviations, special keys,
hidden commands, and macros
o

3. Offer informative feedback

o for every user action, the system should respond in some way (in
web design, this can be accomplished by DHTML - for example, a
button will make a clicking sound or change color when clicked to
show the user something has happened)
4. Design dialogs to yield closure
o Sequences of actions should be organized into groups with a
beginning, middle, and end. The informative feedback at the
completion of a group of actions shows the user their activity has
completed successfully
5. Offer error prevention and simple error handling
o design the form so that users cannot make a serious error; for
example, prefer menu selection to form fill-in and do not allow
alphabetic characters in numeric entry fields
o if users make an error, instructions should be written to detect the
error and offer simple, constructive, and specific instructions for
recovery
6. Permit easy reversal of actions

By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

7. Support internal locus of control

o Experienced users want to be in charge. Surprising system actions,
tedious sequences of data entries, inability or difficulty in obtaining
necessary information, and inability to produce the action desired
all build anxiety and dissatisfaction

8. Reduce short-term memory load

o A famous study suggests that humans can store only 7 (plus or

minus 2) pieces of information in their short term memory. You can

reduce short term memory load by designing screens where
options are clearly visible, or using pull-down menus and icons

Prevent Errors:
 The third principle is to prevent errors whenever possible. Steps can
be taken to design so that errors are less likely to occur, using
methods such as organizing screens and menus functionally,
designing screens to be distinctive and making it difficult for users to
commit irreversible actions.
 Expect users to make errors, try to anticipate where they will go
wrong and design with those actions in mind.
Interface Design Models
Four different models come to play when a user interface is analyzed and
designed. They are,
1. User profile model
2. Design model
3. Implementation model
4. User’s mental model
By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

1. User profile Model:

 This model is designed by the software engineer or human engineer.
 It is must and should to understand the user’s knowledge who using
system.
 Globally there are three kinds of users,
Novice: No syntactic knowledge of the system and having little
semantic knowledge.
Intermittent users: less syntactic knowledge with good semantic
knowledge of the system.
Frequent users: good syntactic knowledge and good semantic
knowledge of the system.
2. Design Model:
 This model is prepared by software engineers.
 While preparing this model requirement specification must be used
properly to set system constraints.
 This model contains data, architecture and components of the
system.
3. Implementation Model:
 Consists of the look and feel of the interface combines with all
supporting information such as videos, images, help files etc.
 This model describes the system syntax and semantic.
 It should match with user’s mental model; users then feel
comfortable with the software and use it effectively.
4. User’s mental model:
 Often called as user’s system perception.
 Consists of the image of the system that user carry in their mind.
 Accuracy of the description depends upon the user’s profile.
By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc
 Vignan Degree College, Kadapa
Software Engineering Unit-IV: USER INTERFACE DESIGN
AND REAL TIME SYSTEMS

By Dhavan MCA, M. Sc