The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design

By Deborah J. Mayhew

Chapter 11: Screen Design Standards

Chapter 11: Screen Design Standards

Purpose

Just as the purpose of Conceptual Model Design is to ensure consistency and simplicity in high-level user interface design , the purpose of Screen Design Standards is to ensure consistency and simplicity in detailed design across all displays within a product interface, as well as across other products used by the same users. Consistency contributes not only to ease of learning and remembering but also to ease of use. Users expect consistency (see Mayhew 1992, ch. 3) and will make errors where inconsistencies occur. Standards articulated before Detailed User Interface Design begins make achieving consistency in design simpler and more efficient.

Screen Design Standards also ensure quality, when the standards are based on the User Profiles, Contextual Task Analysis, Usability Goal Setting, and General Design Principles tasks, as outlined in previous chapters. Finally, standards can reduce time and cost in both development and maintenance in two ways: they allow for development of reusable code, and different designers working on the same product or product family do not have to "reinvent the wheel" in the design process.

Some of your standards will be adopted or adapted from any platform user interface standards you may choose to follow

Description

In this task you define and document a set of Screen Design Standards to be followed by all displays and interactions with them. Some of your standards will be adopted directly, or adapted, from any platform user interface standards you may choose to follow, and...

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The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design

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Chapter 11: Screen Design Standards

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