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Shneidermans Principles

Shneiderman outlines eight "Golden Rules of Interface Design" that should be followed to create intuitive and user-friendly interfaces. The rules are: strive for consistency; cater to universal usability; offer informative feedback; design dialogs to yield closure; prevent errors; permit easy reversal of actions; support internal locus of control; and reduce short-term memory load. Following these principles can help increase users' productivity and feelings of competence by simplifying tasks, providing clear displays, and giving rapid feedback.

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60 views2 pages

Shneidermans Principles

Shneiderman outlines eight "Golden Rules of Interface Design" that should be followed to create intuitive and user-friendly interfaces. The rules are: strive for consistency; cater to universal usability; offer informative feedback; design dialogs to yield closure; prevent errors; permit easy reversal of actions; support internal locus of control; and reduce short-term memory load. Following these principles can help increase users' productivity and feelings of competence by simplifying tasks, providing clear displays, and giving rapid feedback.

Uploaded by

baigsalman251
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Shneiderman's "8 Golden Rules of Interface Design"

1. Strive for consistency.


Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar situations; identical
terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help screens; and consistent color,
layout, capitalization, fonts, and so on should be employed throughout. Exceptions, such
as required confirmation of the delete command or no echoing of passwords, should be
comprehensible and limited in number.

2. Cater to universal usability.


Recognize the needs of diverse users and design for plasticity, facilitating
transformation of content. Novice to expert differences, age ranges, disabilities, and
technological diversity each enrich the spectrum of requirements that guides design.
Adding features for novices, such as explanations, and features for experts, such as
shortcuts and faster pacing can enrich the interface design and improve perceived
system quality.

3. Offer informative feedback.


For every user action, there should be system feedback. For frequent and minor actions,
the response can be modest, whereas for infrequent and major actions, the response
should be more substantial. Visual presentation of the objects of interest provides a
convenient environment for showing changes explicitly.

4. Design dialogs to yield closure.


Sequences of actions should be organized into groups with a beginning, middle, and
end. Informative feedback at the completion of a group of actions gives operators the
satisfaction of accomplishment, a sense of relief, a signal to drop contingency plans from
their minds, and an indicator to prepare for the next group of actions. For example, e-
commerce web sites move users from selecting products to the checkout, ending with a
clear confirmation page that completes the transaction.

5. Prevent errors.
As much as possible, design the system such that users cannot make serious errors; for
example, gray out menu items that are not appropriate and do not allow alphabetic
characters in numeric entry fields. If a user makes an error, the interface should detect
the error and offer simple, constructive, and specific instructions for recovery. For
example, users should not have to retype an entire name-address form if they enter an
invalid zip code, but rather should be guided to repair only the faulty part. Erroneous
actions should leave the system state unchanged, or the interface should give
instructions about restoring the state.

6. Permit easy reversal of actions.


As much as possible, actions should be reversible. This feature relieves anxiety, since the
user knows that errors can be undone, and encourages exploration of unfamiliar
options. The units of reversibility may be a single action, a data-entry task, or a complete
group of actions, such as entry of a name-address block.

7. Support internal locus of control.


Experienced users strongly desire the sense that they are in charge of the interface and
that the interface responds to their actions. They don’t want surprises or changes in
familiar behavior, and they are annoyed by tedious data-entry sequences, difficulty in
obtaining necessary information, and inability to produce their desired result.

8. Reduce short-term memory load.


Humans’ limited capacity for information processing in short-term memory (the rule of
thumb is that we can remember "seven plus or minus two chunks" of information)
requires that designers avoid interfaces in which users must remember information
from one screen and then use that information on another screen. It means that cell
phones should not require re-entry of phone numbers, web-site locations should remain
visible, multiple-page displays should be consolidated, and sufficient training time
should be allotted for complex sequences of actions.
These underlying principles must be interpreted, refined, and extended for each
environment. They have their limitations, but they provide a good starting point for
mobile, desktop, and web designers. The principles presented in the ensuing sections
focus on increasing users’ productivity by providing simplified data-entry procedures,
comprehensible displays, and rapid informative feedback to increase feelings of
competence, mastery, and control over the system.

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