the 3 quick rules (of UI design)

[Judy Perry]

Yeah, okay, so it's not like the tablets from Sinai ;-)

Hold on... gonna go find it...

Mullet, Kevin E. & Sano, Darrell K.  "Applying Visual Design: Trade
Secrets for Elegant Interfaces."  CHI'94, pp. 353-354. <<--remember that I
can't make decent citations to save my life!!!

Better still is the slim volume they later produced "Designing Visual
Interfaces (it has pretty pictures and expanded treatment of the topics).

Basically, these are the three rules:

*Reduction (reduce a design; KISS; if you can remove something and it
still makes sense, by all means, REMOVE IT!) (think roadway signs,
bathroom signs, handicap signs, etc.; basic icon and menu design).

*Regularization (treat similar things similarly, dissimilar things
dissimilarly -- via size, color, spatial orientation, style, font, line,
etc.) (Think early Mac icon schemes).

*Combination for Leverage (look for repeating/similar icons and replace
under a single umbrella; kinda like tabs done right...etc.).

The book does a better job than does the article methinks...

Um, no, the treatments of the three rules are to be used in combination
where applicable...

Judy

On Sat, 15 Jul 2006, Erik Hansen wrote:

>
> what are the the 3 quick rules?