Golden Rules of Design: Shneiderman
Creative Zen:M Media Player
Strive for consistency:
Ensure that the firmware on the media player stays consistent with its interface, terminology, and shortcuts. For example the media player would be much harder to use if the song selection menu was different when within the “Now Playing Interface”, than in the “Artist” list.
Enable frequent users to use shortcuts:
This means that advanced and experienced users are rewarded with having used the media player frequently enough to memorize certain macro’s and shortcuts. These are often established to transfer a “new user friendly” interface, to a far more advanced UI suitable for users wishing to cut down time taken to complete actions. One example of this that is very obvious on the Zen:M is the shortcut function added to the main control panel in the top left corner as can be seen in the picture above. The shortcut function is noted by the arrow sign.
Favourites and user assigned macros can also be much reward to advanced users. This allows the user to define what a certain button press does (macroing). These altered menus can be problematic however when clashes are made between the user assigned interface and the default UI firmware.
Offer Informative Feedback:
Feedback must be delivered quickly and in a concise fashion. Informing the user of the in’s and outs of errors and alerts would confuse most users, so error messages are key so that the user can get used to seeing certain messages and instantly know what action is required of them to resolve the issue. For example when the Media player runs out of battery, no error message is displayed (presumably because there isn’t enough power to display such a message). This can be very confusing and it can take up to half an hour for the media player to even indicate that it is charging when plugged into a mains adaptor. However during the majority of usage the error messages and display dialogues are concise and informative.
Design dialogs to yield closure:
Dialogs must conclude so that the user is advised as to what their instruction is, these methods of concluding the dialog are often represented by yes, no, stop abort or retry options given to the user.
Strive to prevent errors and help users to recover quickly from them:
Input errors are common place so even small
Validation and checking must be present throughout the system to try and ensure that when input errors have been made, users are alerted to them quickly, but not too disruptively so as to allow them to make amendments without noticing a delay for the error indication to be shown.
Allow undo:
Errors must be reversable to allow for human mistakes. Without an undo button the user may make mistakes, but theoretically no serious errors should be made as long as there are certain precautions made when doing potentially disastrous actions, i.e the fact that you have to press yes three times in order to delete a song.
Make users feel they are in control of a responsive system:
Resource-efficient approaches are needed to ensure that users arent struck with heavy waiting times and sluggish responses from the system. Users should be informed of progress at any wait, and information should be displayed regarding the cause of delays.
Reduce short-term memory load:
The everyday user does not want to be overloaded with information that a. may not be useful to the end user, and b. information that the end user will not understand. For example error messages are key to a user understanding what has occured during a problem. Long strings of code and sequences of numbers and letters will only confuse a user.
Creative Zen:M Media Player
Strive for consistency:
Ensure that the firmware on the media player stays consistent with its interface, terminology, and shortcuts. For example the media player would be much harder to use if the song selection menu was different when within the “Now Playing Interface”, than in the “Artist” list.
Enable frequent users to use shortcuts:
This means that advanced and experienced users are rewarded with having used the media player frequently enough to memorize certain macro’s and shortcuts. These are often established to transfer a “new user friendly” interface, to a far more advanced UI suitable for users wishing to cut down time taken to complete actions. One example of this that is very obvious on the Zen:M is the shortcut function added to the main control panel in the top left corner as can be seen in the picture above. The shortcut function is noted by the arrow sign.
Favourites and user assigned macros can also be much reward to advanced users. This allows the user to define what a certain button press does (macroing). These altered menus can be problematic however when clashes are made between the user assigned interface and the default UI firmware.
Offer Informative Feedback:
Feedback must be delivered quickly and in a concise fashion. Informing the user of the in’s and outs of errors and alerts would confuse most users, so error messages are key so that the user can get used to seeing certain messages and instantly know what action is required of them to resolve the issue. For example when the Media player runs out of battery, no error message is displayed (presumably because there isn’t enough power to display such a message). This can be very confusing and it can take up to half an hour for the media player to even indicate that it is charging when plugged into a mains adaptor. However during the majority of usage the error messages and display dialogues are concise and informative.
Design dialogs to yield closure:
Dialogs must conclude so that the user is advised as to what their instruction is, these methods of concluding the dialog are often represented by yes, no, stop abort or retry options given to the user.
Strive to prevent errors and help users to recover quickly from them:
Input errors are common place so even small
Validation and checking must be present throughout the system to try and ensure that when input errors have been made, users are alerted to them quickly, but not too disruptively so as to allow them to make amendments without noticing a delay for the error indication to be shown.
Allow undo:
Errors must be reversable to allow for human mistakes. Without an undo button the user may make mistakes, but theoretically no serious errors should be made as long as there are certain precautions made when doing potentially disastrous actions, i.e the fact that you have to press yes three times in order to delete a song.
Make users feel they are in control of a responsive system:
Resource-efficient approaches are needed to ensure that users arent struck with heavy waiting times and sluggish responses from the system. Users should be informed of progress at any wait, and information should be displayed regarding the cause of delays.
Reduce short-term memory load:
The everyday user does not want to be overloaded with information that a. may not be useful to the end user, and b. information that the end user will not understand. For example error messages are key to a user understanding what has occured during a problem. Long strings of code and sequences of numbers and letters will only confuse a user.
No comments:
Post a Comment