Dec 3rd, 2007
User Interface Improvements: Assistance
In this post I continue writing about some simple practices that will help you quickly improve your software GUI. In the first post I wrote how to position your GUI elements properly. Before I started to write this post I had been thinking how to name it. I’m not writing a comprehensive guide on usability and user interface design. I’m simply writing my observations and thoughts about some practical aspects of GUI design. It’s hard to divide my advice into exact categories with distinct names. I named this post “Assistance”, because I will write about some tricks that will assist users to feel comfortable with your software.
When user works with your software he needs just a limited set of essential functions and, in the same time, he wishes all important functions to be easily accessible. Therefore, as a designer you must keep minimal both the number of visible functional elements and the number of mouse clicks or key pressings to perform an action. Let’s look at the examples.
Options
Options and various selectors are commonly used elements in GUI design. If user must select just a single option then you will likely use a group of radio buttons or a drop down list (combo box). What to choose?
A group of radio buttons will take more window space than a combo box but user needs just one click to choose a certain option while with combo box he needs at average two clicks to do the same task. So, if you have just a few (3 or 4) options then show them all immediately as a group of radio buttons.
On the other hand, if you have five or more options then put them all into a combo box.
It requires more clicks to select an option but it will save much space on your form and will prevent user from odd information overflow.
Hide and lock
We all are lazy. We don’t like to strain our brain without a reason. If on your form there are elements that are meaningful only in a certain configuration then you should hide or disable them in other cases.
Keep user thinking only when you really need it.
Unify
When user sees that some elements look alike then he expects they work alike also. He will be very disappointed if he is wrong. Therefore, unify the similar elements and make them looking and working identical across the whole application.
Don’t use different names for identical operations and don’t name different operations identically.
Simplify
Almost every GUI may be simplified. A pretty common example is using combo boxes for yes\no option. Combo box is a redundant and relatively complex control for this task. Almost always you may replace it with a simple check box. It takes as much screen space as a combo box, or even less, and it requires just a single click to toggle it.
Keep the things as simple as possible.
Unite
Another example how you may simplify software GUI is combining functions of several controls into a single one. This approach requires thorough thinking and it much depends upon your application’s logic but I hope you can find some functions that you may unite in a single control. I found such functions in one of our applications. Look at the example below.
Well, that’s all for today. I hope you have found something useful for your practice in this post. I will try to collect more advice on GUI design and make more posts on this topic.
Meanwhile you may check these interesting links on GUI design:
Windows XP GUI Controls and Layout Reference Guide
Primary & Secondary Actions in Web Forms Edit
Thanks. Very informative.
Thanks for the second part of this article. I learned from it.
Not sure if this is applicable to other readers but for me it would have been even more helpful if the article had mentioned briefly which function/how it works in the software was being simplified. I think it would have reinforced the material.