Application Usability 1: Page-Level Building Blocks for Feature Design

• Amsterdam: Wednesday, April 25

Garrett Goldfield
Full-Day Training Course

The basics of any application are the screen elements that users interact with to make the application do their bidding.

Graphical user interfaces have a rich vocabulary, with design components for many different situations. Each of these building blocks might seem simple, but people don’t always use them correctly. Also, some website controls deviate from standard designs, complicating usability. Both situations have profound implications for the overall user experience.

In this seminar, we’ll explore the behavior of each application screen component, or widget, including both standard behaviors that users expect and novel interface components designed for specific interactions.

What You’ll Learn

• Cognitive Principles - How people think, and why this impacts screen element design
• Which screen element (widget) to use in which circumstance
  • When to deviate from standards and style guides
• How to choose between different widgets that perform similar functions
  • Balancing errors, time to complete tasks and visually appealing interfaces
• The design patterns that users expect for common tasks
• The best ways to communicate information back to your users

Course Outline

• Design primitives: When to use which widget, and how
  • Selection: Menus (drop downs, panels, lists, etc.), hierarchies, long lists, tabs
    • Shortcuts and accelerators
    • Selection devices, including keyboard commands, mouse use, scratch pad and touch screen.
  • Data entry: Form fields, label placement, in-line descriptions and assistance
  • Buttons: Button behavior, radio buttons, checkboxes, tool bars, command links
  • Manipulation: Scrollbars and sliders, multimedia controls, item manipulation controls (handles, frames, rotators)
  • Editing: Standard edit controls, selection behaviors
  • Expandable areas on the screen, scrolling areas within the screen
  • Grouping: Group boxes, white space
  • Chronology
  • Hybrid controls: Menu and split buttons, choosing exactly n options, linked controls, timeline controls, image maps as selectors
  • Error messages, notifications & context sensitive help: Tool tips, balloons, system notifications
• Variations of the standard controls
  • When is it appropriate to “roll your own” controls?
• Window types: Which type to use, and when
  • Primary windows
  • Secondary windows: Dialogs, alerts
• Communicating with users
  • Progress indicators
  • Communicating errors
• Design patterns: Layout guidelines for common tasks
  • Structuring and navigating commands and features: Grouping principles, cognitive principles, layout basics
  • How patterns come together in a UI to convey meaning
  • Managing and selecting from object lists
  • Form-filling
  • Tables
  • Searching
  • Editing
  • Error messages
  • User assistance

Format

This full-day tutorial includes lectures, exercises, and discussion.

Course Materials

Copies of all presentation slides

Who Should Attend

Whether you’re designing website applets or creating a full-blown enterprise application, the fundamental guidelines described in this full-day session will help you better understand your users’ needs and create more efficient and effective applications.

Designers, program managers, usability engineers, and developers can all benefit from this course, which covers interaction design and task analysis, in addition to widget guidelines. No prior knowledge of usability methods is assumed, and the day is intended to appeal to all disciplines. The focus is on the user experience of applications, so no code samples will be discussed; a programming background is not required.

See Also:

Application Usability 2: Dialogue and Workflow Design details how to combine the interaction primitives explained in Application Usability 1 into a full-fledged application that optimally supports user tasks. Each of the tutorials is a full-day, self-contained seminar and can be taken independently. Taken together, however, they will cover the full range of usability issues encountered in application design. If you’re designing for mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android, or iPad, consider our specialized seminar on Touchscreen Apps Usability.

Instructor

Garrett Goldfield is a User Experience Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group, where he consults with clients in a broad range of industries, including ecommerce, automotive, health care, finance, media, telecommunications, education, and nonprofits, as well as highly specialized B2B sites. Previously, Garrett managed the User-Centered Design group for Intuit's Tax Division, focusing on incorporating UCD processes within Intuit's development cycle for TurboTax software and its Web applications. Prior to working at Intuit, Goldfield worked at General Electric’s Information Systems Division, where he conducted ground-breaking work in ecommerce interactions for marketplace transactions; and at The Aerospace Corporation, where he pioneered standards for HCI telemetry data presentation for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. Goldfield's research focuses on usability testing, contextual inquiry, and ethnographic user studies. He has also published and presented on cost justification and ROI for usability practices, brainstorming methodologies, analysis, and interpretation of qualitative user data.