Monday, July 18, 2011

Interface

Eye opening!! The 8 characteristics of successful user interface! This covered a whole bunch of things all into one. Through the reading to my understanding an interface has to be clear, concise, familiar, consistent and attractive. Now, I just have to figure out how to place that into my project that I am trying to create for my kindergartners.

  • Clear—don't want anyone to be left behind
  • Concise—place things in the same area for the user
  • Familiar—we want the user to come back to our site
  • Consistent—WOW what a challenge
  • Attractive—everyone wants others to go "man that is a great site"

I want to create something super fun and useful for my 5 year olds. Does anyone have any ideas that are simple, fun and easy to create in 2 weeks?? Thanks

1 comment:

  1. After reading tips about 8 Characteristics of successful, two things stood out to me-familiar and responsive.
    I would like to make a different to the author’s advice to make it familiar. The author suggests that making something intuitive means “you do it by making it familiar. Familiar is just that: something which appears like something else you’ve encountered.” I totally understand what the author means and partly agree with his opinion. But, as a matter of fact, users encounter new features all the time and they get used to it by using them. I agree that a user interface look familiar to them. But I think a designer do not have to be afraid of adding an unfamiliar feature in their product because users, especially digital natives might enjoy challenging themselves to figure something out.
    For example, I visited a website and navigated a while, and I wanted to go back to home page. I was not able to find the home tab on the menu bar and a home icon. I was trying to figure out how to go back to home. And I click on a logo of the website and it worked. I felt proud of myself because I had never encountered such a situation, but had successfully figured it out by experimenting a few more clicks. That is why I decided to use my class logo as the home click button.
    Second, I totally agree with the author’s opinion on ‘responsive’. Nobody wants to waste his or her time and experience frustration while using technology. Also, sending and receiving a feedback is the core part of instruction whether it is a face-to-face or virtual class. Therefore, I think I need to give a lot of thoughts about how to make my final project interactive with the audience.

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