Follow Ben Shneiderman’s ‘Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design’ if you want to design great, productive and frustration-free user interfaces:
- Strive for consistency: Standardize the way information is conveyed
- Enable frequent users to use shortcuts: With increased use comes the demand for quicker methods of completing tasks – Don’t penalize but reward the good user
- Offer informative feedback: For every action, there should be appropriate, human-readable and relevant feedback
- Design dialogue to yield closure: Don’t keep your users guessing. Tell them what their action has led them to. For example, users would appreciate a “Thank You” message and a proof of purchase receipt when they’ve completed an online purchase
- Offer simple error handling: No one likes to be told they’re wrong, especially your users. Systems should be designed to be as fool-proof as possible, but when unavoidable errors occur, ensure users are provided with simple, intuitive step-by-step instructions to solve the problem as quickly and painlessly as possible. For example, flag the text fields where the users forgot to provide input in an online form
- Permit easy reversal of actions: This feature relieves anxiety since the user knows that errors can be undone; it thus encourages exploration of unfamiliar options
- Support internal locus of control: Give users the sense that they are in full control
- Reduce short-term memory load: Recognizing something is always easier than recall