Localization Guidelines for Your User Interface

When delivering your product in foreign languages, it is important to consider how the user interface will appear to users around the world. While there are no hard-fast rules, the following suggestions provide some guidance in facilitating localization in regard to your user interface.

Microsoft (2001). Articles>Style Guides>User Interface>Localization

Localization of Digital Games: The Process of Blending for the Global Games Market  

The process of localizing digital games can be significantly different from the process of localizing productivity software.

Thayer, Alexander and Beth E. Kolko. Sakson and Taylor (2004). Articles>User Interface>Localization>Games

Looking At GUI Libraries: Spotlight On Infragistics

As a Graphical User Interface (GUI) programmer, I have many interface development tools to choose from. Over the years, my development environment changes to accommodate my needs. This often includes learning new languages and the tools that go with them.

Flowers, Natalie. Carolina Communique (2008). Articles>User Interface>Programming>Software

Macintosh OS 8 Human Interface Guidelines

This document describes the additions and changes to Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines related to the release of Mac OS 8. Specifically, it presents guidelines for taking advantage of the Mac OS platinum appearance and the Appearance Manager. This document does not replace Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.

Apple Inc. (1997). Design>Human Computer Interaction>User Interface

Macintosh OS X: Aqua Human Interface Guidelines

This document, which covers features up to Mac OS X version 10.2, describes what you need to do to design your application for Aqua. Primarily intended for Carbon and Cocoa developers who want their applications to look right and behave correctly in Mac OS X, these guidelines provide examples of how to use Aqua interface elements. Java application developers will also find these guidelines useful.

Apple Inc. (2003). Design>Human Computer Interaction>User Interface

Macromedia Director as a Prototyping and Usability Testing Tool

Efforts to understand user requirements commonly focus on the functionality and features of a product. However, it is important to analyze other product attributes, such as usability. A product may meet all of its functional requirements, but can fail if it has an interface that is difficult to navigate and learn. To address this problem, it is important to get feedback from users as early in the development life cycle as possible. A common technique is to develop a prototype or mockup of a product's interface to present to users.

Ludi, Stephanie. ACM Crossroads (2000). Design>User Interface>Usability

Making Manuals Obsolete: Getting Information out of the Manual and into the Product    

Users loathe reading the operating manuals that accompany new equipment. Manuals often sit unused on a shelf, far from their targeted audience, while the costs of technical support soar. This article promotes integrating information traditionally found in printed manuals into the product itself and reports the experience of a design team in developing an easy-to-use product requiring minimal printed documentation. As part of design teams, technical communicators can advocate both reducing the amount of information required to operate a product and making the information immediately available when needed. These strategies can produce increased customer satisfaction and lower post-sales support costs.

Millar, Carol. Technical Communication Online (1998). Design>Documentation>User Interface

Making Usable Products: An Informal Process for Good User Interfaces

At Microsoft we have full-time employees, called usability engineers, who are trained to help product teams understand what the user's needs are, and analyze how well our product user interfaces match those needs. They do a great deal of work, and understand the discipline of UI design and data collection really well. They are critical to the success of our products. As I've learned from the e-mail I've been getting at hfactor@microsoft.com, most developers don't have the luxury of this kind of support, and are on their own to make good interface design decisions. This issue will introduce a basic development process that helps good UI make it into products. Word of warning: There is no magic recipe for good UI, or for writing good code, and I can't guarantee improved interfaces without some extra effort.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (1999). Design>User Interface>Usability

Making Your Design Real: The Form and Behavior Specification

Let's say your development organization has embraced design as a key to creating successful products. You've devoted time and energy to creating the perfect, goal-directed design for your product. Your programmers are ready and eager to start putting that design into code. So…now what? How do you communicate your design to your development team, accurately and in sufficient detail? One approach is to produce a Form & Behavior Specification.

Olshavsky, Ryan. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Design>Project Management>User Interface

Managing Your Defense Against GUI's from Hell  

Check the number of times you walk out of an office complex grasping a door handle shaped to say 'pull me' while warning you with a label that says PUSH. The unwarranted generalization of 'handle' to both sides of a one-way door shouts cryptodesign at work. You’ve see your VCR mercilessly flashing 12:00 pm into the night (and day), reminding you of your slow-witted inability to set the time. According to a consumer survey, a third of TV viewers have given up ever setting a future video recording date and time. Cryptodesign succeeds in maintaining a useless machine interface. The message is clear. Cryptodesign says 'a technique useful for one situation is probably good in all situations.' The antidote requires that we breath life back into automatic design techniques. Let’s call the antidote 'soul design'.

Schaffer, Eric M. Human Factors International (1995). Design>User Interface

Map-Based Horizontal Navigation in Educational Hypertext  

The paper discusses the problem of horizontal (non-hierarchical) navigation in modern educational courseware. It considers why horizontal links disappear, how to support horizontal navigation in modern hyper-courseware, and looks at our earlier attempts to provide horizontal navigation in Web-based electronic textbooks. Map-based navigation -- a new approach to support horizontal navigation in open corpus educational courseware -- which we are currently investigating, is presented. We describe the mechanism behind this approach, present a system, KnowledgeSea, that implements this approach, and provide some results from a classroom study of this system.

Brusilovsky, Peter and Riccardo Rizzo. Journal of Digital Information (2002). Articles>Web Design>User Interface

Más Allá de la Usabilidad: Interfaces 'Afectivas'

La creciente popularización de las nuevas tecnologías de la información obliga a que cualquier producto interactivo sea diseñado para una audiencia cada vez más heterogénea y menos tolerante con experiencias de uso frustrantes. Las técnicas, metodologías y prácticas propias de la Usabilidad y Accesibilidad, intentan hacer frente a este hecho, estudiando las necesidades, objetivos y comportamiento del usuario, y enfocando cualquier decisión sobre el diseño, así como la evaluación, en base a estos factores.

Hassan Montero, Yusef and Francisco Jesus Martin Fernandez. Nosolousabilidad.com (2003). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Usability>User Centered Design

Mastering the Obvious

This brochure expands upon why ease of use is critical to e-business. In e-business, success follows the path of least resistance. It depends on accessibility, reliability, security and usability of core applications. These applications must be easy to use the first time they are used or your customer may become someone else's customer. Nobody buys ease of use, but nobody buys products without it either. Read about IBM's User-Centered Design (UCD). See why IBM's Thinkpad Team and DB2 Universal database have been so successful. And read in detail about IBM's overall approach to make IT easy.

IBM (1999). Resources>User Interface>Usability

MAX-WIDTH and Flexible Layout with Short Lines

It is now possible to make flexible layout with user-friendly short lines that adapt to screen resolution, to width of browser window, and to font-size chosen by the user. This could be a new beginning for more accessible and usable web pages.

Tverskov, Jesper. Smack the Mouse (2003). Design>Web Design>User Interface>CSS

Measuring the Success of Visual Communication in User Interfaces    

This article discusses three key areas of visual communication we address in user interfaces (UIs): conventional—emphasis on imitating generic forms that meet readers' expectations; icon recognition; visual appeal or 'look-and-feel'. The article uses five case histories to demonstrate how usability research has helped the authors evaluate the quality of visual communication in navigation, icon recognition, and look-and-feel. It describes some of the research methodology the authors use, with examples from the case histories. For each of the three topic areas, we discuss the lessons we learned from the case histories about both usability testing methodology and visual communication guidelines. We mention, but do not concentrate on, related topics such as visual clutter.

Rosenbaum, Stephanie L. and J.O. 'Joe' Bugental. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>User Interface>Assessment>Visual Rhetoric

Measuring the Success of Visual Communication in User Interfaces  

Discusses three key areas of visual communication--information access and navigation, icon recognition, and visual appeal--as related to usability research.

Rosenbaum, Stephanie L. and J.O. 'Joe' Bugental. Tec-Ed, Inc. (2002). Articles>Usability>User Interface

Mediating Group Dynamics through Tabletop Interface Design  

Our tabletop research efforts at Stanford University have focused on how tabletop user interfaces (UIs) might respond to and even influence a user group's social dynamics.

Morris, M.R., Piper, A.M., Cassanego, A., Huang, A., Paepcke, A., and Winograd, T. Stanford University (2006). Articles>Collaboration>User Interface

Menús Pastel

Los menús-pastel (pie-menus) muestran cierta superioridad sobre los ubicuos menús lineales a los que estamos tan acostumbrados. ¿Por qué no han proliferado más y sólo se muestran en algunas aplicaciones?

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Interactive>Web Design

Metaphor-Based Design of High-Throughput Screening Process Interfaces    

This paper describes work on developing usable interfaces for creating and editing methods for high-throughput screening of chemical and biological compounds in the domain of life sciences automation. A modified approach to metaphor-based interface design was used as a framework for developing a screening method editor prototype analogous to the presentation of a recipe in a cookbook. The prototype was compared to an existing screening method editor application in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of novice users and was found to be superior.

Kaber, David B., Noa Segall and Rebecca S. Green. Journal of Usability Studies (2007). Articles>User Interface>Rhetoric>Tropes

Minimal-Feedback Hints for Remembering Passwords

Passwords are a widely used mechanism for user authentication and are thus critical to the security of many systems. Strong passwords (e.g., b5j#Kv!8N) are less vulnerable to attack but at the same time more difficult to remember. Minimal-feedback hints are introduced to support users in remembering their passwords and thereby enabling them to choose stronger passwords.

Hertzum, Morten. uiGarden (2006). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Security

Mode in User Interface Design

Perhaps you had, once or twice, experienced the following: When you logon to a software system, you are required to input a user name and password. In most situations, the system remembers your last input and the system automatically pre-fills in the username edit box, and the cursor will be directly placed in the password edit box. You tried typing in your password several times, only to be complained by the system that the password is wrong.

Zhang, Liang. uiGarden (2006). Articles>User Interface

Modeling Information in Electronic Space: An Introduction to This Special Issue    

Organizing content for delivery on the computer screen challenges us to design our information in an imagined three dimensions. As mobile devices respond to the surrounding world, our content also needs to adjust to the real physical environment around our user. Our rhetorical space has changed, and in this special issue, authors wrestle with the ways in which we think, move, and design differently as we explore these virtual and real worlds. One team suggests showing the user the structure of the information gradually in search forms. Another author suggests that merging object-oriented thinking with visual language may offer us a way to consider structure and format together, while granting each its own distinct qualities. Focusing on mobile devices, one author sketches out the challenges we face in this new rhetorical space, and another highlights the idea of embeddedness, the fact that our devices are enmeshed within a content-rich world that we move through. Our final contributor takes us to museums, to

Price, Jonathan R. Technical Communication Online (2001). Design>Information Design>User Interface>Web Design

"More is Less" for Many Home Entertainment System Users

The days of a single remote for the TV or cable box are long gone. Like ants at a picnic, the control pads have invaded the nation's coffee tables. But unlike ants, remotes evolve rapidly. Not only are there more, but many sport added buttons and complexity added each time a model is upgraded with new features.

Sidener, Jonathan. San Diego Union-Tribune (2006). Articles>User Interface>Usability>Minimalism

Motorcycle UX: Riding in the Fast Lane

The design decisions that both industrial designers and interaction designers have made on the Breva provide an enhanced experience for the rider--that is, for me.

Sokohl, Joe. UXmatters (2008). Design>User Experience>User Interface

The Myth of Optimal Web Design

Perfection in design is not possible. No matter how much is known about a given business, user group or technology, you can not simultaneously satisfy all possible objectives. For any website or user interface, there are no mathematics, and no algorithms, for deciding which objectives to satisfy in a single design, or even for accurately defining an optimal solution within any of those objectives. There are usability, design and business methods that effectively evaluate and illuminate promising directions , but they are sensitive tools, that work more as guides, rather than maps. In general, any form of design involves too many simultaneous possible objectives and forms of solutions to enable any overall mathematical or algorithmic based confidence. An optimal design, in the broadest sense, is a mythical idea.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (2001). Design>Web Design>User Interface