Important Goals of Improved User Interfaces
Yesterday we considered the benefits of a good user interface from a financial perspective. Today, I’d like to look a little further into some of the other goals of improved user interface design. Of course, these can all be linked to financial benefits as well, but lets forget about money for a bit okay!
First of all, there is safety! We sometimes get so involved with our own web projects that we sometimes forget that there are certain projects out there under development that will potentially put lives at risk! For example, you don’t want an air plane pilot to have a very confusing system or there will be an increased risk of crashing! There are all sorts of examples, from home security system, heart monitor systems, etc… If you’re working on a critical system, you’ll want to spend a lot of time making sure your user interface is intuitive and easy to understand to ensure the safety of the users.
Another goal of user interface design is to provide functionality. A system you develop will probably be able to do all sorts of things. Most of the time, the users will not be able to access all of this functionality, they will only be able to access the functionality that is made available via the user interface. The goal of the user interface is therefore to make as much of this functionality available as possible while not confusing the user using the system.
A third goal of user interface design is to provide efficiency. Two systems with the same functionality can have very different efficiency depending on the user interface of the system. For example, consider a web based system like Wodpress. Now imagine a task that might be commonly desired by users such as inserting an image. In one system, the user interface might let you do this by the following: click insert on a menu, search list, click insert file, select file type, select image file. In another system the user interface might add an image button right onto the screen that you click to insert an image. If you are inserting images frequently, the second user interface will be much more efficient because it will allow you to accomplish your task more quickly. As usual, you will need to get feedback from your users so you know which functionality they use the most so you can then make the most efficient user interface for your users.
The last goal of user interface design is to increase usability. This means that by creating a better user interface, we hope the system becomes easier to use and therefore is easier to learn than a similar system with a poor user interface.
Leave a Reply