Responses to input should be immediate and should assure the user

8 pointsMetaWhirledPeas2 comments

What are your ground rules for user interfaces?

Here are some I decided on:

1. Responses to input should be immediate and should assure the user of which input occurred

2. Once displayed, controls should not change position without user input

3. Buttons should be unambiguous

4. Selections should be unambiguous

5. Controls and content should conform to accessibility standards

------------------------------------------------------

Story time for #1: My Mom's Fire TV

"Alexa, channel 11"

The TV does nothing

A spinning animation appears (Loading ~something~ but what? Did it even hear me correctly?)

A half minute later, the TV arrives on channel 11

^^^ This is particularly problematic when you get the command wrong.

------------------------------------------------------

Story time for #2: Azure Portal

Load Application Insights (a log viewer)

Go to click on a filter...

Filter button moves, is now replaced by an ~Install Snapshot Debugger~ button

------------------------------------------------------

Story time for #3: Google Chromecast (and every streaming app ever)

Watch TV show

Pause TV show

Mess with the settings

Try to resume the video. Which button is selected? ~I DON'T KNOW~

View on HN

1. The user should always see some form of acknowledgement to their input in a few seconds. 2. There should never be more than 30 seconds between proof of life. (The Windows "this program is not responding" message is a lie, and needs to go). This is why we had spinning cursors... -/|\-/|\- repeat 3. There should always be a "Press F1 for Help" somewhere on the screen 4. Never allow the user to express an invalid state... don't enable the "submit" button until all the required fields are valid. 5. Never make a user type data more than once, each data entry step is a source of errors. 6. If possible, run the User Interface in its own thread, so that it always responds in less than 50 milliseconds. 7. When communicating with a remote device, never lose data because the connection was broken, always be able to recover if the connection is re-established, and restarted.