CHAPTER 10

Interface design

- is edging closer to match the art, trendiness, Image browsing

and techniques taught in design schools.
- The design of image browsers should be
Mullet and Sano's categories of design principles: governed by the users’ tasks, which can be
classified as follows:
Elegance and simplicity: unity, refinement and fitness 1. Image generation
Scale, contrast, and proportion: clarity, harmony, 2. Open-ended exploration
activity, and restraint 3. Diagnostics
4. Navigation
Organization and visual structure: grouping, 5. Monitoring
hierarchy, relationship, and balance
Animation
Module and program: focus, flexibility, and consistent
application - The use of animation has grown significantly

Image and representation: immediacy, generality, Examples

cohesiveness, and characterization
- Keeping user oriented during transition
Style: distinctiveness, integrity, comprehensiveness, and - Indicating an affordance, inviting interaction
appropriateness - Entertaining
- Indicating background activity (e.g. progress
Empirical results bar)
- Storytelling
- Structured form superior to narrative form
- Alerting
- Improving data labels, clustering related
- Providing a virtual tour (e.g. for architectural
information, using appropriate indentation and
designs)
underlining, aligning numeric values, and
- Explaining a process
eliminating extraneous characters improves
performance. Color can: (opposite colors called)
Sequence of displays - Soothe or strike the eye.
- Add accents to an uninteresting display.
- Should be similar throughout the system for
- Facilitate subtle discriminations in complex
similar tasks, but exceptions will certainly occur.
displays.
- Within a sequence, users should be offered
- Emphasize the logical organization of
some sense of how far they have come and how
information.
far they have to go to reach the end.
- Draw attention to warnings.
Design considerations - Evoke strong emotional reactions of joy,
excitement, fear, or anger.
- Users need to consult multiple sources rapidly.
- Minimally disrupt user's task. Guidelines:
- With large displays, eye-head movement and
- Use color conservatively.
visibility are problems.
- Limit the number and amount of colors.
Coordinating multiple windows - Recognize the power of color to speed or slow
tasks.
- Designers may break through to the next - Color coding should support the task.
generation of window managers by developing - Color coding should appear with minimal user
coordinated windows, in which windows appear, effort.
change contents, and close as a direct result of - Color coding should be under user control.
user actions in the task domain. - Design for monochrome first.
- A careful study of user tasks can lead to task- - Consider the needs of color-deficient users.
specific coordination. - Color can help in formatting.
Consider these factors in interface design: - Be consistent in color coding.
- Be alert to common expectations about color
- Synchronized scrolling codes.
- Hierarchical browsing - Be alert to problems with color pairings.
- Opening/closing of dependent windows - Use color changes to indicate status changes.
- Saving/opening of window state - Use color in graphic displays for greater
- Tabbed browsing information density.
- Tiled or overlapping windows
- Ribbon interface Non-anthropomorphic design: (for human, not like
- Design patterns human)
- Start menu - attributions of intelligence, autonomy, free will,
Browsing Large views etc. can deceive, confuse, and mislead users
- important to clarify differences between people
Zoom factors: 5-30 and computers
- users and designers must accept responsibility
- Larger suggests an intermediate view is needed. for misuse of computers
Semantic zooming - although attractive to some people, an
anthropomorphic interface can produce anxiety
Side by side placement, versus fisheye view in others

Error Messages
 - Constructive guidance and positive tone
- Messages should, where possible, indicate what
users should do to correct the problem
- Unnecessarily hostile messages using violent Development Process Guidelines
terminology can disturb non-technical users:
- Seek professional content writers and
Negative words to avoid in your form or error copywriters
message. - Prepare user documentation early (before
1. Oops implementation)
2. Error - May act as an alternative to the formal
3. Failed s/w specification.
4. Problem - Set up guideline documents and coordinate and
5. Invalid integrate across all involved departments
6. Wrong - Review drafts thoroughly
7. Prohibited - Field-test early editions
- Provide feedback mechanisms for readers
CHAPTER 11 - Revise to reflect changes regularly

Documentation and User Support

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) CHAPTER 12

- is an xml-based architecture for authoring, - The query is satisfied not by a single final
producing, and delivering technical information. retrieved set, but by a series of selections of
- The DITA architecture was originally developed individual references and bits of information at
by IBM. DITA is now an OASIS standard. each stage of the evermodifying search.
- A bit-at-a-time retrieval of this sort is here called
Darwin berrypicking.
- DITA uses principles of inheritance and SEARCH TERMINOLOGY
specialization.
Task objects
Information Typing
- Task objects (such as movies for rent) are
- DITA is based on an information architecture of stored in structured relational databases, textual
Concept, Task and Reference for technical document libraries, or multimedia document
documents. libraries.
Architecture - A structured relational database consists of
relations and a schema to describe the relations.
- Consists of set of design principles. - Relations have items (usually called tuples or
records), and each item has multiple attributes
Advantages of Online Documentation
(often called fields), which each have attribute
Physical advantages values.
- A library consists of a set of collections
- available whenever on web-connected electronic (typically up to a few hundred collections per
device, can’t get lost or misplaced, physical library) plus some descriptive attributes or
workspace not needed, can be updated rapidly. metadata about the library (for example, name,
location, owner).
Navigation features
- Digital libraries are generally sets of carefully
- can provide index and other search facilities, selected and cataloged collections.
can link to other external materials and sources.  Digital archives tend to be
more loosely organized
Interactive services - Directories hold metadata about the items in a
library and point users to the appropriate
- can bookmark, annotate, and tag, can include
locations.
graphics, sound, color, and animation, screen
- Items in unstructured collections like the web
readers or other tools can be provided for users
have no (or very few) attributes.
with disabilities.
- Task actions are decomposed into browsing or
searching.
- Once users have clarified their information
Online Help needs, the first step towards satisfying those
- provides a step by step approach to the needs is deciding where to search.
activities in a database migration application - Supplemental finding aids can help users to
clarify and pursue their information needs, e.g.
Reading from paper versus from displays table of contents or indexes
- Additional preview and overview surrogates for
Visual fatigue and stress from reading computer items and collections can be created to facilitate
displays are common problems, but these conditions browsing.
respond well to rest, frequent breaks, and task diversity

Some guidelines for supporting reading are:

FIVE-PHASE FRAMEWORK FOR SEARCH USER
- Don’t use uncommon or unfamiliar vocabulary. INTERFACES
- Avoid difficult to read typefaces (all caps is
1. Formulation: expressing the search
harder to read)
2. Initiation of action: launching the search
- Avoid text on busy backgrounds.
3. Review of results: reading messages and
- Avoid information buried in repetition.
outcomes
- Do not use centered text.
4. Refinement: formulating the next step
 5. Use: compiling or disseminating insight

MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENT SEARCH AND OTHER

SPECIALIZED SEARCHES

- Image search
- Video search
- Audio search
- Geographic information search
- Multilingual search
- Other specializes searches

THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF SEARCH

Social search as “an umbrella term” describing search

acts that make use of social interactions with others.

- May be explicit or implicit, co-located or remote,

synchronous or asynchronous.
- Social bookmarking and ranking, e.g. Reddit
- Personalized search built on user profiles, e.g.
past site visits.
- Collaborative filtering and recommender
systems, e.g., Netflix.
- Music recommendation, e.g., Spotify.