what things do you need to think about when you are making your interface for someone else to use?

The things to be considered are:-

1. Who are the users? are they computer experienced?
2. what the interface looks like? colourful is suitable for kids.
3. Is the "help button" provided also? in case the users don't know how to use.
4. easy to use?

When designing a user interface, the main issues are:

1) the visual image - layouts, images, buttons, colours, font sizes, etc
2) the content - clear instructions, reasonable number of words used
3) the functionality - do the buttons work? does clicking a link take you to the right place?
4) the ease of usage - user-friendly and not too complicated
5) the types of users - novice, intermediate, power

Issues:
- User friendliness
- Simplicity (complicated layouts would normally arise confusions)
- Providing sufficient help and support on the interface e.g rollover tips
- Design the interface generally for majority of the user i.e. intermediate users. This will enable both the intermediate and power user to utilize the interface without much problems. Whereas for the beginners, they can use the support and help features in which they are showed on how to use the interface, therefore no matter if the user is sexy/charming/young/old/male/female, they will be able to use the interface with minimal problems.

Issues that need to be considered when designing user interface:

User requirement fullfilled
User friendliness
Easy to read content (standard font etc)
Easy navigation
Minimum visual (just-right-for-the-eye)
etc

Matters:

# Type of users
# Users' point of views
# Accessiblity of help aspect
# Visuality
# Functionality
# Speed of loading where neccessary
# User-friendliness

so far so good, but... i see you each mention either "ease of use" or "user friendliness"

yes, indeed, that is what you want. but how are you going to get it?

.... what makes one thing hard and another easy?

..... what kinds of things do people find hard and what kinds of things do they find easy?

of course, some people have better skills at certain things than other people, but that is not our concern.

1. what (information processing) things do ALL people find hard?

1.1 for example, compare these two faces:



what's the difference?

1.2 now compare these two faces



what's the difference?

1.3 for example, is Dreamweaver easier to use than Java? Why?

2. can you find anythings in our lecture notes that you could mention in your answers to the above questions?

hint: what does "usability" mean?
hint: what kind of computer is human?
hint: how many numbers can you remember without writing them down?
hint: why do we say "a picture is worth a thousand words"?
hint: why do moralists classify people into "good" and "bad" with nothing in between?

Nielson - among others - has compiled a list of things we should do (his design principles, that we can use as a guide to performing heuristic evaluations).

What about the "donts"? What kinds of things (apart from not doing the dos!) can you think of that we should not do (ie what should we be careful to avoid in our designs? To put it another way, what kinds of things do people find it difficult to do?

To answer this question, you will find it helpful to re-read the lecture notes on human information processing.