Reference Library User Interface Design
	This page provides access to a variety of downloadable papers that address User Interface (UI) design issues. The following topics are considered: General Methods UI Patterns Usability General Software Usability Defect Log [PDF] Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd. This is a template for a UI log for any part of the user interface that violates established principles of usability. Structure and Style in Use Cases for User Interface Design [PDF] Larry L. Constantine and Lucy A. D. Lockwood This paper presents common narrative styles that define use cases. Examples are presented and advantages and disadvantages are discussed. This paper also compares essential use cases with conventional use cases and scenarios. This paper introduces a new highly-structured form of a use case for support of UI design. The GUI Gold Standard [HTM] Elizabeth Millard This article discusses the evolution of user interfaces, user preferences, key qualities of UIs, and the future of UIs. What Do Users Want? Engineering Usability into Software [PDF] Larry L. Constantine This article answers what users want is good tools that are easy to learn and use. This article discusses how usability is achieved and introduces some tools to build better tools Why are Human-Computer Interfaces Difficult to Design and Implement? [PDF] Brad A. Myers This article discusses why user interface design and implementation are so difficult. Back to the top Methods Adaptation in Automated User-Interface Design [PDF] Jacob Eisenstein and Angel Puerta Design problems involve issues of stylistic preference and flexible standards of success; human designers often proceed by intuition and are unaware of following any strict rule-based procedures. These features make design tasks especially difficult to automate. Adaptation is proposed as a means to overcome these challenges. This paper describes a system that applies an adaptive algorithm to automated user interface design within the framework of the MOBI-D (Model-Based Interface Designer) interface development environment. Bare Essentials: A Note on Simplifying User Interfaces by Simplifying Use Cases [PDF] Larry L. Constantine This note discusses how reducing the number of steps in essential use cases is one of the keys to success in usage-centered design. An example is used to illustrate this point. Conditional Interaction: Improving User Case Notation for User Interface Design [PDF] Larry L. Constantine This note presents two refinements of essential use case models that will make it easier to model real-world tasks. A simple notation for conditional actions and for partially ordered or unordered interactions between user and systems is also provided. Human Computer Interaction User Interface Design & Development [PDF] Pearl PU This slide presentation covers: what graphical design must account for, layout grids, visual consistency, grid layout recommendations, navigational cues, Web page layout, and related issues. Instructive Interaction: Making Innovative Interfaces Self-Teaching [PDF] Larry L. Constantine and Lucy A.D. Lockwood This paper describes an approach to enhance the use and learning for novel user interfaces. Explorability, predictability, and guidance are three design principles when used together form the basis for creative designs that support efficient production and will enable users to understand the system. This paper presents underlying principles of instruction interaction, which comprises a body of techniques support by the mentioned design principles, and also describes specific techniques based in those principles. Methodologies for the Creation of Interactive Software [PDF] Judy Brown This paper explores the methodologies for the development of interactive systems proposed by software engineering and human-computer interaction specialists. The purpose of this paper is to present some of these methodologies and to identify their strength and weaknesses. Methodologies are examined for their ability to facilitate working relationships between members of an integrated design team consisting of both SE and HO specialists. User Interface Design: Tips and Techniques [PDF] Scott W. Ambler This paper's contents include: user interface design tips and techniques, prototyping tips and techniques, interface-flow diagrams, where to go from here, general guidelines, screen design, and prototyping. User Interface Tailoring for Multi-Platform Service Access [PDF] Guido Menkhaus and Wolfgang Pree This paper presents and discusses MUSA (multiple user interfaces, single application) which is a prototype system that addresses the issues of UI tailoring and multi platform access caused by the diversity of mobile computing gadgets. Back to the top UI Patterns A Pattern Approach to Interaction Design [PDF] Jan O. Borchers To create successful interactive systems, user interface designers need to cooperate with developers and application domain experts in an interdisciplinary team. These groups, however, usually miss a common terminology to exchange ideas, opinions, and values. This paper presents an approach that uses pattern languages to capture this knowledge in software development, HCI, and the application domain. A formal, domain-independent definition of design patterns allows for computer support without sacrificing readability, and pattern use is integrated into the usability engineering life cycle. Architectural Patterns for Usability [PDF] Len Bass and Bonnie E. John Facets of usability that require architectural support such as cancellation, undo, and progress bars are identified. In this paper, for each facet, an architectural pattern is described that supports the achievement of the facet. Facets of usability that require architectural support are difficult to add after the initial design of a system has been completed and, hence, it is critical to identify these facets prior to initial system design. Exploring Patterns for User Interface Elicitation [PDF] Pedro J. Molina and Oscar Pastor This position paper proposes the use of UI Conceptual Patterns in the analysis phases as a complement of the UI design patterns. Such patterns can improve the specification and provide a consistent start point for supporting the UI designers' work. Form-Based User Interface - The Architectural Patterns A Pattern Language [PDF] Jens Coldewey and Ingolf Krüger Despite all the benefits of object-oriented user interfaces, there are still domains that call for a form-based user interface. Business information systems that support fast processing of few, well-defined use cases are typical examples. This pattern language helps to develop the software architecture for such systems. The paper is part of a larger effort to collect patterns for business information systems, currently pursued by the ARCUS team. Interaction Design Patterns: Twelve Theses [PDF] Jan O. Borchers This paper offers twelve statements outlining the author's position about patterns in human-computer interaction (HCI). The first, under "Roots", suggest how HCI, unlike software engineering, can adapt the original patterns idea from architecture. The second set, "Adaptation", shows how this concept can be expanded to cope with the dynamics and requirements of user interfaces. The "Users" section explains how HCI patterns lead to participatory design. Interaction Patterns in User Interfaces [PDF] Martijn van Welie and Hallvard Trætteberg This paper presents interaction patterns in user interfaces. The patterns format focuses on usability as the essential design quality. The format and twenty patterns written in this format are discussed. Patterns as Tools for User Interface Design [PDF] Martijn van Weile, Gerrit C. van der Veer and Anton Eliëns Capturing knowledge about the successful design of usable systems is important for both novice and experienced designers and traditionally, this knowledge has largely been described in guidelines. However, guidelines have shown to have problems concerning selection, validity and applicability. Patterns have emerged as a possible solution to some of the problems from which guidelines suffer. This paper explores how patterns for user interface design must be structured in order to be effective and usable tools for designers. A structure for user interface design patterns is proposed and is illustrated with an example. Patterns for HCI and Cognitive Dimensions: Two Halves of the Same Story? [PDF] Sally Fincher This paper firstly surveys the search for Patterns and Pattern Languages (PL) in HCI, and examines some of the problems that the search has encountered. Secondly, some aspects of the Cognitive Dimensions (CD) framework are examined and the author suggests that there may be a relationship between the two endeavors, to the probable enhancement of the pattern endeavor and the possible enhancement of the expression of the CD framework. Use and Misuse of Metaphor [PDF] Larry Constantine This note outlines a few basic issues of using metaphors and also some misused of metaphors on the Web. User Interface Patterns for Hypermedia Applications [PDF] Fernando Lyardet , Gustavo Rossi and Daniel Schwabe The authors have mined many patterns that show recurrent design problems and their solutions both while developing the navigational architecture of the application and when building its user interface for hypermedia applications (in CD-ROM and in the Web) using the Object-Oriented Hypermedia Design Method (OOHDM). This paper presents some patterns related to the design of user interfaces for hypermedia applications. Using Patterns to Document Frameworks [PPT] Author Unknown This PowerPoint presentation outlines using patterns for documentation using HotDraw, a framework for graphics editors, as an example. Back to the top Usability Achieving Usability Through Software Architecture [PDF] Len Bass, Bonnie E. John and Jesse Kates This report presents an approach to improving the usability of software systems by means of software architectural decisions. Each aspect of usability is formulated as a scenario and for each scenario an architecture pattern is presented that implements its aspect of usability. The usability scenarios are then organized by category and a matrix is presented that correlates these two categories with the general scenarios that apply to them. Correcting Menu Usability Problems with Sound [PDF] Stephan A. Brewster and Murray G. Crease Future human-computer interfaces will use more than just graphical output to display information. This paper suggests that sound and graphics together can be used to improve interaction. The authors designed and experimentally evaluated a new set of menus with much more salient audio feedback to solve this problem. The results from the experiment showed a significant reduction in the subjective effort required to use the new sonically-enhanced menus along with significantly reduced error recovery times. A significantly larger number of errors were also corrected with sound. Examining the Usability of Web Site Search [PDF] Jennifer English, Marti Hearst, Rashmi Sinha, Kirsten Swearington and Ping Yee One of the most pressing usability issues in the design of Web sites is that of how to improve navigation and search. The authors are conducting a series of usability studies to address this problem, focusing on Web sites that consist of large collections of loosely organized information. This article describes their method and presents preliminary results which suggest that use of faceted metadata can be useful both for the initial stages of highly constrained search and for the intermediate stages of less constrained browsing tasks. NEES Website Guidelines [PDF] Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), the Consortium Development Team This guide suggests strategies to improve the overall usability of NEES Websites. Many of the guidelines are derived from case studies where users were presented with alternative designs for Websites in order to gather information on what features confuse users, affect their ability to find key materials, or fail to meet their expectations. Return on Investment for Usable User-Interface Design: Examples and Statistics [PDF] Aaron Marcus This article discusses applying usability techniques to the production process to make products more efficient. Topics include: overall value of implementing UI practices, development: reduce costs, sales: increase revenue, use: improve effectiveness, and other ROI factors. Usability and Open Source Software [PDF] David M. Nichols and Michael B. Twidale This paper discusses how the usability (and other characteristics) of open source software influences how many computer users use them. Usability and Privacy: A Study of Kazaa P2P File-Sharing [PDF] Nathaniel S. Good and Aaron Krekelberg The authors of this paper use a cognitive walkthrough as well as a laboratory user study to analyze the usability of the Kazaa file sharing user interface. They discovered that the majority of the users in their study were unable to tell what files they were sharing, and sometimes incorrectly assumed they were not sharing any files when in fact they were sharing all files on their hard drive. They also looked at the current Kazaa network, and determined that a large number of users are currently sharing personal and private files without their knowledge, and from their dummy server they were able to see that other users are indeed taking advantage of this and downloading files such as "Credit Cards.xls" and email files. Usability Heuristic Guidelines for 3D Multiuser Worlds [PDF] Maria Köykkä,, Raila Ollikainen, Merja Ranta-aho, Wofgang Milszus, Suzanne Wasserroth and Manuel Friedrich The importance and use of non-immersive 3D worlds has grown. The usability of 3D multiuser interfaces is not yet well understood. In this paper the two methods, user tests and expert evaluation, used in usability tests of a nonimmersive 3D multiuser world are compared, and the suitability of Nielsen's heuristics on the usability studies of 3D multiuser worlds is discussed. Suggestions for additional categories for Nielsen's usability heuristics are given in order to capture specific problems related to interface design of 3D applications. Usability is Good Business [PDF] George M. Donahue, Susan Weinschenk and Julie Nowicki This paper discusses the cost-effectiveness of usability engineering and performing usability cost-benefit analyses in order to acquaint software professionals and other interested parties with these topics. Usability Measurement in Context [PDF] Nigel Bevan and Miles Macleod This paper reviews different approaches to the measurement of usability. The approaches are then related to the definitions of usability in international standards. Also an overview is given of methods and tools used to measure user performance, cognitive workload and user perceived quality. Usability of Security: A Case Study [PDF] Alma Whitten and J.D. Tygar Designing security software that is usable enough to be effective is a specialized problem, and user interface design strategies that are appropriate for other types of software will not be sufficient to solve it. In order to gain insight and better define this problem, the authors studied the usability of PGP 5.0, which is a public key encryption program mainly intended for email privacy and authentication. They chose PGP 5.0 because it has a good user interface by conventional standards, and we wanted to discover whether that was sufficient to enable non-programmers who know little about security to actually use it effectively. Usability Properties in Dialog Models [PDF] Martijn van Welie, Gerrit C. van der Veer and Anton Eliëns Current dialog modeling techniques generally do not deal with usability aspects, as they are often functional based models, dealing only with states and state changes. This paper investigates how usability aspects can be incorporated into dialog models so that usability can be evaluated during the design process without doing usage tests. A set of measurable properties is given which together could give an indication about the usability of the design. Usability Questionnaire [PDF] David Laurenson A brief questionnaire about the usability of software tools. Usability Testing: Revisiting Informed Consent Procedures for Testing Internet Sites [PDF] Oliver K. Burmeister This paper explores issues of professional, ethical conduct in usability testing centering around the concept of 'informed consent'. Previous work on informed consent has been in homogeneous geographic locations. With Internet sites being developed at a prodigious rate, these procedures need to be revisited for their applicability to heterogeneous locations, in terms of culture, business practice, language and legal requirements. Some previously valued principles might now be considered discretionary, that is their applicability has situational specificity. Other principles are mandatory. Back to the top