Usability:

Goals, Guidelines and Principles

At the end of this lecture you should:
Understand the major usability principles which
may be employed when designing and evaluating a
system; and

Appreciate the role of standards and design guide-

lines in promoting usability.

Background reading
Dix et al, Chapter 4

Usability Goals
General aims and objectives of system design.

Agreed upon early in the SW development

lifecycle.

Formal usability specifications are identified

later on in design and early implementation stages,
including a specification of,
The method used in measuring the usability attribute,
e.g. number of explicit user actions required to end a
program,

The criteria by which the measuring method is

determined, e.g. number of commands used and the time
taken to accomplish task, etc.

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 Usability Goals

High level usability gaols include those related to system:

Effective
Efficient
Safe
Have good utility
Easy to remember how to use
As well as those related to user experience in using the
system:
Fun
Satisfying
Motivating
.

Usability Goals
Effectiveness: how good a system is at
doing what it is supposed to do.
Is the system capable of allowing people to learn well,
carry out their work efficiently, access the information
they need, ?

Efficiency: the way a system supports

users in carrying out their tasks.
Once users have learned how to use a system to carry
out their tasks, can they sustain a high level of
productivity?

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 Usability Goals
Safety: protecting the user from
dangerous conditions and undesirable
situations.
Does the system prevent users from making serious
errors, and if they do make an error, does it permit them
to recover easily?
Utility: the extent to which the system
provides the right kind of functionality so
that users can do what they need or want
to do.
Does the system provide an appropriate set of functions
that enable users to carry out all their tasks in the way
they want to do them?

Usability Goals
Learnability: how easy a system is to learn
to use.
How easy is it and how long does it take (i) to get started
using a system to perform core tasks, and (ii) to learn
the range of operations to perform a wider set of tasks?
Memorability: how easy a system is to
remember how to use, once learned.
What kinds of interface support have been provided to
help users remember how to carry out tasks, especially
for systems and operations that are used infrequently?

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 User experience goals
Less clearly defined, e.g.
Fun,
Satisfying,
Emotionally fullfilling,
Rewarding, aesthetically pleasing
Motivating
Helpful
Enjoyable,
Entertaining

Examples
What are the key usability goals and user
experience goals for each of the following:

A mobile device that allows young children to

communicate with each other and play
collaborative games
Easy to use, effective, efficient, easy to learn and
use, fun and entertaining

A CAD system for architects and engineers

Easy to learn, easy to remember, have good utility, be
safe, efficient, effective, support creativity and be
aesthetically pleasing

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 Design and Usability
Principles
Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge,
experience and common sense.
Prescriptive: what to provide and what to avoid.
Do not specify design detail, but act as reminders.
Provide a framework for heuristic evaluation.
We will consider two examples:
Neilsens usability heuristics
Dix et als usability principles

Usability principles (Nielsen 2001)

Ten Usability Heuristics. www.useit.com/papers/heuristic

1. Visibility of system status

Feedback should not be restricted to error messages.
System should be constantly informing the user of what it is
doing and how it is interpreting user input.

2. Match between system and the real world

Terminology should match users and be consistent with their
expectation.

3. User control and freedom

Provide clearly marked exits

4. Consistency and standards

Same command should have same effect. Same type of
information displayed in the same location on different
screens.

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 Usability principles (Nielsen 2001)
5. Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from
errors
Provide good error messages; multi-layered help.

6. Error prevention
use of selection rather than data entry

7. Recognition rather than recall

Minimise users memory load

8. Flexibility and efficiency of use

Provide shortcuts for experienced users; macros, scripts,
interaction histories for command reuse and defaults

Usability principles (Nielsen 2001)

9. Aesthetic and minimalist design

Keep it simple. Interface should match the users tasks and
task sequences, and present the user with the info.
they need when they need it.

10. Help and documentation

Ideally online help should be context sensitive and paper
manuals should provide task-oriented access to
information.

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Dix et als Principles to support usability

A structured presentation of general principles to apply

during design of an interactive system.

Learnability
How easy is it to attain effective use of the system?

Flexibility
How much scope is there for exchanging information in
multiple, different ways?

Robustness
How easy is it to evaluate whether our goals have been
achieved?

Predictability Consistency

Learnability
Generalizability
Synthesizability

Familiarity

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 Dialogue Customizability
initiative

Flexibility
Task migratability
Multithreading

Substitutivity

Observability Task conformance

Robustness

Recoverability

Responsiveness

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Learnability

Predictability

Can user determine effect of

future actions based on past
interaction history?
What are the limits of knowledge
requirement placed on user?

Can user easily determine what

operations are currently visible?

Learnability

Synthesizability

Can user see the results of his/her

actions?

Honesty of interface: ability of interface

to provide an observable and informative
account of its state.

Immediate vs. eventual honesty

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 Learnability

Familiarity
On fist acquaintance can user perceive
system in terms with which he/she is
familiar?
Use of metaphor enhances guessability;
Affordance: intrinsic properties of visual
objects suggest how they can be
manipulated.

Learnability

Generalizability
How easy is it to determine how to
perform new tasks, given users current
experience of the system?
Occur within one application or across
applications

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 Learnability

Consistency
In similar situations, can we achieve our
ends in similar ways?
(File and Edit menus in MS windows)

Flexibility

Dialogue initiative

Can user take initiative in

interaction with system?

system vs. user pre-emptiveness

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Flexibility
Multithreading

Can user perform more than one task at the same

time?

concurrent vs. interleaving;

Concurrent allows simultaneous communication of info.
pertaining to separate tasks
Interleaved permits temporal overlap between
separate tasks, but dialog is restricted to a single
task at a time

Multimodality allow multithreading

Several modalities (interaction devices or objects)
used for a single input or output expression., e.g.
double clicking or using a shortcut; visible as well as
audible feedback, etc.

Flexibility

Task migratability

Can balance of control pass between user

and system, as appropriate?

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 Flexibility

Substitutivity
Can equivalent values be substituted for
each other?
Applied on input and output expressions

Flexibility

Customizability
Can the User Interface be modified to
suit the user?

By the user (adaptability), e.g. redefine

command names, macros
By the system (adaptivity), e.g. learning
from users beahviour

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Robustness

Observability

Can user determine internal state of system

from what s(he) can see?

Persistence: duration of effect of

communication act and the ability of user to
make use of that effect. (audible warning,
combined with persistent visible clues)

Robustness

Recoverability
Are mistakes final in effect?
(Desirable to have Undo, especially for actions
such as erase *.*!)

Reachability: avoid blocking the user from getting

to a desired state from some undesired one,
Commensurate effort: If it is difficult to undo a
given effect on the state, then it should have
been difficult to do in the first place

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 Robustness

Responsiveness
How long does the user need to wait?
Even if the result isnt instantaneous,
there should be some feedback, e.g.
progress bar
Response time stability is the stability of
the duration for identical or similar
computational tasks.

Robustness

Task conformance

Does system do everything user wants, in

the way (s)he wants?

task completeness or coverage

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 Design rules guidelines

Design rules: rules which designer

can follow to (hopefully) ensure
usability.

Guidelines: General advice on how to

attain good usability.

Guidelines
Shneiderman is a wonderful source for
these, but not the sole focus of this
course. 2 examples:
Display guidelines (p. 315, extracts only)
Display data to users in directly usable
form
Use affirmative statements rather than
negative statements
Left-justify columns of alphabetic data to
permit rapid scanning

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 Guidelines (ctd)
Colour (p. 325, extracts only)
Use colour conservatively
Recognise power of colour as a coding
technique (e.g. red for
warning/unsatisfactory state; green for
normal/satisfactory state)
Design for monochrome first (approx. 8%
of men and 1% of women have some form of
colour blindness)

Summary
Design principles and guidelines are collections of
usability pointers to guide interaction design.
Rules are more prescriptive.
Both are used to:
promote consistency among members of design team,
Embody practical experience,
Impose a house style
Promote reuse
Provide a common terminology
Avoid pitfalls of intuitive design and personal preference

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