How to Design Effective GUIs

Course Length: 3 Days

Key Objectives

• Identify user needs quickly and accurately.
• Build a practical and efficient GUI structure.
• Avoid common GUI usability pitfalls.
• Learn specific guidelines for designing windows, menus, icons, pulldowns, dialog boxes, direct manipulation, and controls.
• Design effective error handling methods.
• Create highly usable screen designs that save:25%-40% in user, time20%-60% in errors, 30%-90% in training time.

Course Overview

Graphical user interfaces can provide the developer with unprecedented power to support end user needs. But these benefits occur only if the interface is designed properly. Subtle pitfalls in GUI design can turn a developer's good intentions into an end user's nightmare. This course provides the developer with the necessary skills to create highly self-evident screens. Pragmatic human factors design methods are taught using a dynamic combination of lecture, video, group exercises and on-line demonstrations.

Audience

This course is designed for system developers, project managers, interface designers, and others involved in specifying graphical user interfaces. This course is platform independent, and is applicable under Microsoft Windows, OS/2, Motif Macintosh, etc.

Prerequisite

• None

Course Content

Software Ergonomics

• Importance and value- actual cases

GUI Tools- Values, Pitfalls, and Applications

• Windows, icons, mice, pulldowns
• Metaphors
• Direct manipulation

Meeting Your User's Needs

• Identify types of users, taskflows, and environments
• Workflow reengineering

Select A User Interface Architecture

Detailed Structure

• Within the architecture, use the right screen types

Widget Selection

• Choose the right widgets based on the user type and taskflow
• 24 useful widgets

The Secret of User Interface Design

Window Logic

• Cursor movement
• Intellectual, memory, and motor principles
• Input device, control/display ratio, Fitt's law

Layout

• Oculometers and eye movement
• Object justification and arrangement
• Clutter, grouping, and sequencing
• Character types

Color and Highlighting

• Signal detection theory
• Performance advantages and problems

Wording

Code Design

• Design of data elements accessed by users
• Principles of length, character set, mnemonics, chunking
• Abbreviation rules

Case Problem

Expert Users

Error Handling

• Error detection methods
• Automation correction
• Error messaging
• Error handling strategy for various user types

Other messages

• Feedback
• In-progress
• System Failure

Usability Testing

Standards, Guidelines, and Style Guides