Best Practices for Improving User Interface Design

2004

Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We believe those usability problems are related to a legacy of formalism-centric tools that don’t promote the new challenges of modern software development. In this short paper, we briefly describe a new tool, under development, that tries to promote usability in modeling tools to support collaborative development of interactive software. It focuses on usable, real-world languages and a developer-centered design.

The user interface is arguably the most important element of a computer-based system or product. If the interface is poorly designed, the user's ability to tap the computational power of an application may be severely hindered. In fact, a weak interface may cause an otherwise well-designed and solidly implemented application to fail. Three important principles guide the design of effective user interfaces: (1) place the user in control, (2) reduce the user's memory load, and (3) make the interface consistent. To achieve an interface that abides by these principles, an organized design process must be conducted. User interface design begins with the identification of user, task, and environmental requirements. Task analysis is a design activity that defines user tasks and actions using either an elaborative or object-oriented approach. Once tasks have been identified, user scenarios are created and analyzed to define a set of interface objects and actions. This provides a basis for the creation of screen layout that depicts graphical design and placement of icons, definition of descriptive screen text, specification and titling for windows, and specification of major and minor menu items. Design issues such as response time, command and action structure, error handling, and help facilities are considered as the design model is refined. A variety of implementation tools are used to build a prototype for evaluation by the user. The user interface is the window into the software. In many cases, the interface molds a user's perception of the quality of the system. If the "window" is smudged, wavy, or broken, the user may reject an otherwise powerful computer-based system.

2009

The development of interactive systems typically involves the separate design and development of disparate system components by different software developers. The user interface (UI) is the part of an interactive system through which a user can access the system functionality. User interface development is a complex task that typically involves the construction of prototypes and/or models.

1996

Designing interactive applications today could no longer be thought without considering extensive use of computer systems during the whole life cycle. Any development environment is generally expected to provide a complete and consistent set of software tools that enable designers to develop new applications as fast and as best as possible. Computer-Aided Design of interactive systems should namely and significantly participate in a high quality result.

ICSE Workshop on SE-HCI, 2003

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2000

ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, 1987

This written report summarizes the discussions an d conclusions of the goals and objectives group at th e ACM/SIGGRAPH Workshop on Software Tools for Use r Interface Development. The report is organized into th e following sections : e Section 1-Overview of group goals and discussion s Section 2-Definition and characteristics of a UIM S ® Section 3-Criteria used to develop a taxonomy of a UIM S Section 4-Tasks and tools fo r user interface developmen t o Section 5-Suggested topics and areas of research 1. Overview of group goals and discussion s The members of the group have been both developer s and end users of user interfaces. This experience provide d two perspectives on the nature of user interface software. Both of these views played a major role in our discussion s and the conclusions presented here. The two primary goals of the group were to enumerate the various tasks or actions involved in the development o f user interfaces and to determine the software tools that coul d provide automated support for these actions. Prior to discussing the activities and software tool s required for user interface development, the group discusse d these topics : e Definition of a UIM S o Characteristics of a UIM S o Criteria to be used in developing a taxonomy of a UIM S The group also defined several areas and topics o f research on user interfaces and UIMS that should b e investigated by the academic and industrial research community. This report documents these discussions an d conclusions .

The research reported and discussed in this thesis represents a novel approach to User Interface evaluation and optimisation through cognitive modelling. This is achieved through the development and testing of a toolkit or platform titled Toolkit for Optimisation of Interface System Evolution (TOISE). The research is conducted in two main phases. In phase 1, the Adaptive Control of Thought Rational (ACT-R) cognitive architecture is used to design Simulated Users (SU) models. This allows models of user interaction to be tested on a specific User Interface (UI). In phase 2, an evolutionary algorithm is added and used to evolve and test an optimised solution to User Interface layout based on the original interface design. The thesis presents a technical background, followed by an overview of some applications in their respective fields. The core concepts behind TOISE are introduced through a discussion of the Adaptive Control of Thought – Rational (ACT-R) architecture with a focus on the ACT-R models that are used to simulate users. The notion of adding a Genetic Algorithm optimiser is introduced and discussed in terms of the feasibility of using simulated users as the basis for automated evaluation to optimise usability. The design and implementation of TOISE is presented and discussed followed by a series of experiments that evaluate the TOISE system. While the research had to address and solve a large number of technical problems the resulting system does demonstrate potential as a platform for automated evaluation and optimisation of user interface layouts. The limitations of the system and the approach are discussed and further work is presented. It is concluded that the research is novel and shows considerable promise in terms of feasibility and potential for optimising layout for enhanced usability.

IEEE Software, 2003

Although user interfaces represent an essential part of software systems, the Unified Modeling Language )UML) seems to have been developed with little specific attention given to user interface issues. Several researchers have investigated integrating interface modeling techniques with UML. In UML, one models tasks using extended activity diagrams rather than by incorporating a completely new notation into UML. UMLi also addresses the relationships between use cases, tasks, and views, and thoroughly addresses the relationship between tasks and the data on which they act. UMLi is probably the most technically mature proposal for interface development in UML.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008