Principles for User-Interface Design

[Marielle Lange]

>...and not just user-configurable UIs, but also the... um... I forget
>what Microsoft calls it, but it's the thing where the menus have the
>most recently-used items rearranged on the fly by default.

>Kids - don't try this at home. These are clowns^H^H^H^HMicrosoft
>engineers at work designing your user experience.

<off_topic>
Apologizes in advance to all PC users on this list. I had to use a PC to help a
student set up an experiment this week... I had a very hard time keeping up
from swearing. You know, all these little things that get you exclaim, "he
that's clever" on one platform and "bloody hell, stop taking all these stupid
decisions". (I let you guess which comment applies to which platform)

Let's not start some arguing. Simple question: how many of you swear at your
computer. What platform are you using? If you happen to use different
platforms, how often do you swear when using each one of them

In case you do it often, why not introduce a bit of diversity and try "'Wretch',
'Beast', 'Swine', 'Jellyfish', 'Ectoplasm', 'Freshwater swab', 'Bashi-bazouk',
'Caterpillar', 'Baboon', 'Parasite', 'Disgraceful', 'Treason', 'Twister',
'Heretic', 'Technocrat', 'Hydrocarbon', 'Anthracite', 'Coconut', 'Fuzzy-wuzzy',
'Anthropithecus', 'Black bird', 'Nincompoop', 'Anacoluthon', 'Invertebrate',
'Liquorice' (from: http://www.angelfire.com/super2/animorphs/insult.html ;-) ).
</off_topic>


<on_topic>
The rev-ed wiki is at: <http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/>

There is some information (work in progress, mostly parts of John Mathewson's
MSc thesis) about user-interface elements and guidelines, along with a few
links
<http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=ResourcesInterfaceNavigation>.
Really, feel free to update and improve the content.

Links to Both apple and microsoft guidelines can be found there, along with the
ones of other platforms and environments.

For a quick read, I recommend
<http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html>
Ten Usability Heuristics by Jakob Nielsen.
</on_topic>

Cheers,
Marielle