Chapter 9
Laws of Interface Design
“Welcome to another voice-mail adventure! To begin your journey, just press 1.”
“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”
Chinese proverb
The study of human-computer interaction has been ongoing for the last half of the twentieth century. It has its roots in human factors and man-machine studies from the 1940s. In the last 20 years of the twentieth century, several practitioners and academics have postulated principles or laws to help organize the field of information. We compared the work done by Ben Shneiderman (1998) and Jakob Nielsen (1994), and added our contributions and that of Julie Nowicki from Optavia Corporation. From these sources we distilled the 20 Laws of Interface Design that are defined and discussed in this chapter. These laws form the basis of the specific guidelines we recommend in the next chapter. By understanding these basic laws about people and their interaction with computers, you will be better able to understand the reasoning behind the dos and don'ts of the next chapter. The laws are:
- User Control
- Human Limitations
- Modal Integrity
- Accommodation
- Linguistic Clarity
- Aesthetic Integrity
- Simplicity
- Predictability
- Interpretation
- Accuracy
- Technical Clarity
- Flexibility
- Fulfillment
- Cultural Propriety
- Suitable Tempo
- Consistency
- User Support
- Precision
- Forgiveness
- Responsiveness
Each law is defined ...
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