Various Definitions of User Interface

• The part of a computer program that displays on the screen for the user to see
• A set of controls such as buttons, commands and other devices that allow a user to operate a computer program
• The part of an application that the end user sees on the screen and works with to operate the application, such as menus, forms and buttons

The Goldmine Rush

The Boom

• Online Medium: A paradigm shift in the information dissemination approach
• Beating the success tape with ‘first to market’

The Bust

To beat “first-mover” sites, competitors started loading truckloads of features, content, and so on, leading to complexities for end users.

The Realization

• For a sustainable competitive advantage, focus on quality user experience
• It is user experience that forms the customer’s impression of the company’s offerings
• It is user experience that differentiates the company from its competitors
• It is user experience that determines whether your customer will ever come back

What Goes Into User Experience

Understanding every possible expectation and action that a user is likely to take is the key to User Experience.

The Various Elements of User Experience are:

• The Strategy Plane - Finding out the business and user objectives of any product or site.
• The Scope Plane – Translating user needs and site objectives into specific requirements.
• The Structure Plane – Defines the flow, which the users would possibly take.
• The Skeleton Plane – The placement of buttons, tabs, photos, and blocks of text.
• The Surface Plane – The layer with which a user interacts. This layer is made up of images and text. Some of these images and text might be attached to some function.

Creating Intuitive User Interfaces

From a usability perspective, site design is more challenging and important than page design.

Homepage

• Should be designed differently from the rest of the pages
• Should answer the questions, such as, “Where am I?”  and “What does this site do?”
• Should offer these three features:

1. Directory of the site’s main content area (navigation)
2. Summary of the most important news or promotions
3. A search feature

Navigation – Should answer these three fundamental questions

• Where am I?
• Where have I been?
• Where can I go?
• Create site structure that reflects user’s view of the site and the information they are looking for
• Use icons in navigation only if it helps users to recognize items
• Show hierarchical path through breadcrumb navigation

Search-

• Give users an input box to enter search queries, instead of just giving a link
• Don’t offer a feature to “Search the Web” from the site’s search function
• Make search easily available from every single page of site
• Show page description and keywords in search results

Content Design – Writing for the web

• Use the inverted pyramid approach
• Be crisp and to the point
• Write for scannability
• Avoid redundant content
• Don’t use clever phrases that make users work too hard to figure them out
• Use consistent capitalization and other style standards
• Give the Page title on each page
• Emphasize legibility

Some Other Tips

• Use colors with high contrast between the text and the background and readable fonts
• Almost all text should be left-justified, avoiding continuous text in caps
• Offer enough information for user to avoid mistakes
• When errors occur, offer suggestions for recovery
• Error messages should be “polite” and not pin the blame on user
• Optimize your photos for the web.
• Label graphics and photographs if their meaning is not clear, use Alt Text with images
• Optimize video files. Use streaming options wherever possible
• When downloading, indicate file size
• Provide option to users to download any plug-ins.
• Use graphics to show real content, not just decorate your homepage.
• Never animate critical elements of a page such as the logo, tagline or main headline
• Web pages should be dominated by content of interest to the user
• To understand the grouping of information, provide adequate white space.
• Make your design compatible for various browsers like IE, Firefox, Safari, etc.

By Shubhankar Chakraborty

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