User Interface Best Practices Scott Lines Web App Express

User Interface Best Practices

Four objectives for your app / system: 1)Easy to learn 2)Easy to use 3)Fast 4)Stable

Easy To Learn Know your audience – Who is your user? – What is their education level? – How will they be trained? – Are you using their “language”? – Where will they be using your app?

Easy To Learn Boeing 737 Computer

Easy To Learn Site Inspection App

Easy To Learn Keep it simple – Don’t do more than you need to do – Do what you need to do in an excellent way – Use it yourself – Simple 30 (20, 10) years ago is not simple today Users are much more computer savvy

Easy To Learn Keep it simple!

Easy To Learn Let users play with it – Have a test environment – Have a test mode

Easy To Learn Keep it consistent – Have a consistent look and feel – Keep logical actions and components grouped together – Use color consistently – Use the same button labels – Keep error messages consistent

Easy To Learn This! Not This! Be consistent and group logically

Easy To Use Understand the manual process users follow Use it yourself Instruct the user what to do

Easy To Use Tell the user what to do.

Easy To Use Not This! Error messages tell the user how to fix

Easy To Use Error messages tell the user how to fix This!

Easy To Use Easy on the eyes Provide feedback

Mock it up – Balsamiq Mockups Easy To Use

Fast Know the manual process…replicate in the app/system User interface speed vs. data retrieval/processing speed Save data at the appropriate time Consistency

Fast SQL + Alpha Anywhere – No excuse for slow data retrieval – No excuse for slow processing – Indices – Engine Configuration – Design – If slow -> get help! Tip: Put your webroot on an SSD

Stable Handling “bugs” – Log the error so you can fix it – the error to your support team – Get the user back up and running – Find the root cause of the error and fix it

Stable Example of a database error

Stable Database error log example

Stable Test thoroughly What will the user do? – Data entry – Backspace key – F5 key – Close the app/browser

Stable Backup data – 6 backups per day – After 7 days delete all intraday backups except last one – Especially useful when systems go live Make your system fast – Provide proper server environment

Think!

More Information Google Blog.teamtreehouse.com/10-user-interface- design_fundamentals