Practical Design Guidelines

Title: Human centred Design for Graphical User Interfaces, Practical Guidelines
Participants: Klaus Hinum, Silvia Miksch, Monika Lanzenberger
Institution: Information Engineering Group (ieg), Institute of Software Technology and Interactive System, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, Europe.
Homepage: http://ieg.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/projects/mt_klaus_hinum/index.htm

Description: Good graphical user interface design is not a trivial task. This master thesis provides guidelines to solve this problem. It will give hints on how to structure each page, what to consider when using text and graphics, and how to ensure a good usability. Furthermore, icon and menu design are described in depth. These guidelines can be used for designing or evaluating an interface. The principles described are generic and applicable to any existing graphical user interface standard. Finally, the guidelines are used to evaluate four different user interfaces. These analyses show that good designed interfaces fulfil most of the guidelines. Furthermore, it shows that flaws can be uncovered and corrected. The fourth analysis demonstrates that the guidelines can also be taken during the development phase of a user interface.