Effects of RSVP Display Design on Visual Performance in Accomplishing Dual Tasks with Small Screens  

Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) represents a mechanism for exhibiting temporal information instead of spatial information to overcome the limitations of small-screen devices. Previous studies examining this area focused only on information presented by RSVP displays and disregarded changes in the performance of accompanying tasks associated with such displays. Therefore, this investigation performed a dual-task experiment (a search task for static information and a reading task for RSVP display information) to examine the effects of presentation mode (character-by-character, word-by-word, and one-line format), speed (171, 260, 350, and 430 characters per minute, or cpm), and text-flow orientation (vertical and horizontal orientation) of RSVP display information on the visual performance of users during different stages of usage (whether current usage is the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or eighth day of usage) for a small screen.

Chen, Chien-Hsiung and Yu-Hung Chien. International Journal of Design (2007). Design>User Interface>Information Design>Usability

El Enlace: Forma y Función

Los enlaces, en la actual Web, tienen la función de representar un vínculo o conexión unidireccional entre dos nodos web. Son la unidad básica de interacción de los sistemas hipertexto, por lo que la interacción en la Web comúnmente es conocida como Navegación. En un espacio virtual compuesto por nodos y vínculos entre dichos nodos, si se entiende que la ubicación del usuario está en el nodo que se encuentra visualizando, la interacción sobre los enlaces con la posterior visualización de otros nodos se entiende como un desplazamiento o, en un océano de nodos, como navegación. Para que el usuario dentro de nuestro sitio web experimente una navegación eficiente, fácil y satisfactoria, los enlaces no sólo tendrán que conectar nodos con contenidos verdaderamente relacionados, sino además presentarse de tal forma que el usuario entienda sin ambigüedades que se trata de un enlace, comprendiendo consecuentemente su función.

Hassan Montero, Yusef. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Usability

Elephants in the Living Room: The Destructive Role of Denial in Web Design

Four of your fellow development team members, all trying to do their specific jobs to the best of their abilities, have the power to sink your best effort at interaction design. As an interaction designer, it is your job to see they don't do so. (If you are not an interaction designer, read on anyway; you may be surprised to learn that you may be part of the problem.)

Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2000). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Collaboration

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Naked Objects Meet the Interface  

Naked Objects, the latest incarnation of the persistent notion of object-oriented user interfaces, proposes to eliminate the need for visual and interaction design of user interfaces by always presenting users with unadorned domain objects in a standard form and by constraining all interaction to the same few interaction idioms. Such simplistic user interfaces can be generated automatically through a software framework. This article examines the likely impact of the Naked Objects approach in light of its strengths and shortcomings as well as its undeniable appeal to developers and decision makers seeking shortcuts to user interface design. The ultimate significance of Naked Objects may be in the lessons it offers for practicing professionals, lessons that highlight the need for empowering users as problem-solvers by giving them better tools that enable them to achieve diverse ends by diverse means.

Constantine, Larry L. Constantine and Lockwood (2002). Design>User Interface>Methods

Empirical Evaluation of a Popular Cellular Phone's Menu System: Theory Meets Practice    

A usability assessment entailing a paper prototype was conducted to examine menu selection theories on a small screen device by determining the effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction of a popular cellular phone's menu system. Outcomes of this study suggest that users prefer a less extensive menu structure on a small screen device. The investigation also covered factors of category classification and item labeling influencing user performance in menu selection. Research findings suggest that proper modifications in these areas could significantly enhance the system's usability and demonstrate the validity of paper-prototyping which is capable of detecting significant differences in usability measures among various model designs.

Huang, Sheng-Cheng, I-Fan Chou and Randolph G. Bias. Journal of Usability Studies (2006). Articles>User Interface>Usability>User Centered Design

Engineers Make Obvious Design Mistakes

The engineers who build the products people use every day are not experts in user behaviour, and they frequently make mistakes that cause lost time and immeasurable frustration. Interaction designers could improve thousands upon thousands of products, leaving engineers to deal with the areas of their interest and experience.

Baker, Adam. Merges.net (2001). Design>User Interface>Engineering>User Centered Design

Ensuring Accessibility for People With Color-Deficient Vision

If you do not consider the needs of people with color-deficient vision when choosing color schemes for applications and Web pages, those you create may be difficult to use or even indecipherable for about one in twelve users.

Gabriel-Petit, Pabini. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Interface>Accessibility>Color

Evolving User Interface Standards

Every software development team either hires a UI specialist or consults an expert to design the next best killer application. As more and more users log onto the net, user base tends to grow and new technologies evolve, web developers and designers are left with very little time to cope up with new techniques in user interface. Thus a new wave of User Interface issues has occurred in the software development life cycle.

Sarjapur, Harsha. uiGarden (2006). Design>User Interface>Standards

The Explorer Bar: Unifying and Improving Web Navigation  

The Explorer bar is a component of the Internet Explorer web browser that provides a unified model for web navigation activities. The user tasks of searching for new sites, visiting favorite sites, and accessing previously viewed sites are simplified and enhanced by using a single user interface element.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2005). Design>Web Design>User Interface

Exploring Types and Characteristics of Product Forms  

Incorporating emotional value into products has become an essential strategy for increasing a product's competitive edge in the consumer market. It is therefore important for product manufacturers to understand how products affect consumers' emotions. This study was undertaken to investigate the types and characteristics of household products that elicit pleasurable responses, in particular among young, college-age consumers. The results of the study could suggest the types and characteristics to consider when developing pleasurable products aimed at young consumers.

Chang, Wen-chih and Tyan-Yu Wu. International Journal of Design (2007). Design>User Interface>User Experience>Emotions

Extending UML for User Interface

This paper seeks to set out my current position and opinion on how the Unified Modeling Language might be extended to accommodate the modeling of interaction design and user interface design for the purpose of facilitating a user centered design process. I will be presenting proposals for two distinct levels of abstraction in the development of a user interface design. For the higher level, the Interaction Design, I will seek to layout a laundry list of attributes that would be required by a good modeling language for Interaction Design.

Anderson, David J. UIdesign (2000). Design>User Interface>UML

Extensible User Interface Language (XUL)

XUL is an XML-based language for describing the contents of windows and dialogs. XUL has language constructs for all of the typical dialog controls, as well as for widgets like toolbars, trees, progress bars, and menus. Where HTML describes the contents of a single document, XUL describes the contents of an entire window (which could itself contain multiple HTML documents).

Cover Pages (2003). Design>User Interface>XML

Facilitating Data Exploration with Query Previews: A Study of User Performance and Preference

Current networked and local data exploration systems that use command languages (e.g. SQL), menus, or form fillin interfaces do not give users an indication of the distribution of data in their databases. This often leads users to waste time, posing queries that have zero-hit or mega-hit results. Query previews are a novel visual approach for browsing and querying networked or local databases. Query previews supply users with data distribution information for selected attributes of a database, and give continuous feedback about the size of the result set as the query is being formed. Subsequent refinements might be necessary to narrow the search sufficiently. Because there is a risk that query previews are an additional step, leading to a more complex and slow search process, we ran a within subjects empirical study with 12 subjects who used interfaces with and without query previews and with no network delays. Even with this small number of subjects and minimized network delays we found statistically significant differences showing that query previews could speed up performance 1.6 to 2.1 times and lead to higher subjective satisfaction.

Tanin, Egemen, Amnon Lotem, Ihab Haddadin, Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant and Laura Slaughter. SHORE (1999). Design>User Interface>Usability>Search

Fast-Track User-Centered Design Techniques

The problem: we are being asked to do more UCD work, faster, and with smaller staffs. Sound familiar? Thirteen practitioners met in Asheville, N.C. at UPA 2000 to examine the questions of how we can reduce time and costs and still achieve good results. They developed many practical tips and considerations.

Bugental, J.O. 'Joe' and Kristin Travis. Usability Professionals Association (2001). Design>User Interface>User Centered Design

Faucet Facets: Few Best Practices for Designing Multifaceted Navigation Systems

So often we assume that Web sites should be hierarchically organized. We talk about a 'home page' that offers 'top-level navigation' so that users can 'drill down' to the content. It's as if we're programmed to think top down. But what about information that isn't as easily structured this way? Sometimes, content has many attributes that have different importance to different users. A hierarchy assumes everyone approaches these attributes the same way, but that's often not the case.

Veen, Jeffrey. Adaptive Path (2002). Design>Web Design>User Interface

Fitts's User Interface Law Applied to the Web

Interface design is difficult in part because everything requires interpretation. A design that works for one task or one user might not be appropriate for another. In other types of engineering, like architecture or bridge building, designers can always rely on laws of physics and gravity to make designs work. There is at least one immutable rule for interface design that we know about, and it's called Fitts's Law. It can be applied to software interfaces as well as Web site design because it involves the way people interact with mouse or other pointing devices. Most GUI platforms have built-in common controls designed with Fitts's Law in mind. Many Web designers, however, have yet to recognize the powerful little facts that make this concept so useful.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (2000). Design>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Web Design

Five Survival Techniques for Creating Usable Products

When we ask designers what stage they spend the bulk of their time in when launching a product, the majority of designers answer, the Implementation Stage. However, our research shows that the teams launching the most usable products on schedule and on budget spend the bulk of their time in the Measure and Learn stage.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2007). Design>Usability>User Interface>Methods

Flamenco

Flamenco es un proyecto de interfaz de usuario sumamente versátil que combina la búsqueda directa en la base de datos con la navegación siguiendo enlaces organizados en una jerarquía de metadatos (datos sobre los datos) y la previsualización de resultados relacionados.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Interface

Formularios: Identificación de los Campos Opcionales

Completar formularios en los sitios web es uno de los procesos que requiere normalmente mayor esfuerzo por parte del usuario. No disponer de formularios 'usables' puede ser una de las causas de abandono más frecuente de un sitio web. Para conseguir formularios usables se deben tener en cuenta muchos aspectos. Uno de ellos, es diferenciar de forma fácil y clara los campos obligatorios de los opcionales[1]. En este artículo se muestran y valoran lo diferentes métodos que utilizan para ello las webs de banca de particulares españolas. El trabajo de campo realizado ha consistido en revisar los procesos de ejecución de transferencias y de registro de nuevos clientes (si lo hubiera) de los sitios web de los siguientes trece bancos: Patagon, Cajamadrid, Cam, Uno-e, eBankinter, CaixaCatalunya, BancoPopular-e, Santander Central Hispano, BBVA, La Caixa, El Monte, Ing-direct, Banesto.

Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Usability

Foundations of Interaction Design

An interview with David Malouf on his article, Foundations of Interaction Design. We discuss several foundations of Interaction design including time, metaphor, abstraction, and negative space. David also provides greater detail to comments posted on his article from readers from around the world.

Malouf, David Heller and Jeff Parks. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>User Interface>Interaction Design>Podcasts

Four Strategies for Promoting Common UI Guidelines within Adobe  

It can be very challenging to create a consistent cross-product user experience.

Bachman, Bill, Frederick Aliaga, Dave Valiulis and Marissa Treinen. Adobe Magazine (2002). Design>User Interface>Software

Fragments (of Time)

The best web interfaces take time – the one asset that seems to be in perpetually short supply. Leading Scandinavian web developer Pär Almqvist presents a time-based perspective on web interfaces and the network economy.

Almqvist, Pär. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>User Interface

From Computing Machinery to Interaction Design

When asked to project 50 years ahead, a scientist is in a bit of a quandary. It is easy to indulge in wishful thinking, or to promote favorite current projects and proposals, but it is a daunting task to anticipate what will actually come to pass in a time span that is eons long in our modern accelerated age. If fifty years ago, when the ACM was founded, biologists had been asked to predict the next 50 years of biology, it would have taken amazing prescience to anticipate the science of molecular biology. Or for that matter, only a few years before the initiation of the ACM even those with the most insight about computing would have been completely unable to foresee today's world of pervasive workstations, mobile communicators, and gigabit networking.

Winograd, Terry. Stanford University (1997). Design>User Interface>Interaction Design

From GUI to E(motional) UI

How ironic that we think we can get more exact results from our computers by emulating human interaction, but when we want exact results from human interaction, we unintentionally emulate computers. Engineering, air traffic control, legal contracts--in all endeavors where precise communication is critical--our success has depended on washing out human emotion and natural language in favor of formal procedures and protocols, complete with a detailed domain-specific language.

Agro, Leandro. UXmatters (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>User Interface>Emotions

From Usage Scenarios to User Interface Elements in a Few Steps  

In practice, designers often select user interface elements like widgets intuitively. So, important design decisions may never become conscious or explicit, and therefore also not traceable. In order to improve this situation, we propose a systematic process for selecting user interface elements (in the form of widgets) in a few explicitly defined steps, starting from usage scenarios. This process provides a seamless way of going from scenarios through (attached) subtask definitions and various task classifications and (de)compositions to widget classes. In this way, it makes an important part of user interface design more systematic and conscious. For an initial evaluation of the usefulness of this approach, we conducted a small experiment that compares the widgets of an industrial GUI that was developed as usual by experienced practitioners, with the outcome of an independent execution of the proposed process. Since the results of this experiment are encouraging, we suggest to investigate this approach further in real-world practice.

Kaindl, Hermann and Rudolf Jezek. Constantine and Lockwood (2002). Design>User Interface>User Centered Design