Flow and Transparency
201
Designing Harmonious Interactions
203
Chapter 11 Eliminating Excise
223
GUI Excise
224
Excise and expert users
225
Training wheels
225
“Pure” excise
226
Visual excise
226
Determining what is excise
228
Stopping the Proceedings
228
Errors, notifiers, and confirmation messages
228
Making users ask permission
230
Common Excise Traps
231
Navigation Is Excise
232
Navigation among multiple screens, views, or pages
233
Navigation between panes
233
Navigation between tools and menus
235
Navigation of information
236
Improving Navigation
237
Reduce the number of places to go
238
Provide signposts
238
Provide overviews
241
Provide appropriate mapping of controls to functions
242
Inflect your interface to match user needs
245
Avoid hierarchies
247
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Chapter 12 Designing Good Behavior
249
Designing Considerate Products
250
Considerate products take an interest
251
Considerate products are deferential
252
Considerate products are forthcoming
252
Considerate products use common sense
253
Considerate products anticipate human needs
253
Considerate products are conscientious
253
Considerate products don’t burden you with their personal problems 254
Considerate products keep us informed
255
Considerate products are perceptive
255
Considerate products are self-confident
256
Considerate products don’t ask a lot of questions
256
Considerate products fail gracefully
256
Considerate products know when to bend the rules
257
Considerate products take responsibility
259
Designing Smart Products
260
Putting the idle cycles to work
260
Smart products have a memory
261
Task coherence
263
Actions to remember
265
Applying memory to your applications
266
Chapter 13 Metaphors, Idioms, and Affordances
269
Interface Paradigms
270
Implementation-centric interfaces
270
Metaphoric interfaces
271
Idiomatic interfaces
273
Further Limitations of Metaphors
276
Finding good metaphors
276
The problems with global metaphors
276
Macs and metaphors: A revisionist view
279
Building Idioms
280
Manual Affordances
282
Semantics of manual affordances
284
Fulfilling user expectations of affordances
284
Chapter 14 Visual Interface Design
287
Art, Visual Interface Design, and Other Design Disciplines
288
Graphic design and user interfaces
289
Visual information design
289
Industrial design
290
The Building Blocks of Visual Interface Design
290
Shape
291
Size
291
Value
291
Hue
292
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Orientation
292
Texture
292
Position
293
Principles of Visual Interface Design
293
Use visual properties to group elements and provide clear hierarchy 294
Provide visual structure and flow at each level of organization
296
Use cohesive, consistent, and contextually appropriate imagery
302
Integrate style and function comprehensively and purposefully
306
Avoid visual noise and clutter
307
Keep it simple
308
Text in visual interfaces
310
Color in visual interfaces
311
Visual interface design for handhelds and other devices
312
Principles of Visual Information Design
313
Enforce visual comparisons
314
Show causality
314
Show multiple variables
314
Integrate text, graphics, and data in one display
315
Ensure the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content
315
Show things adjacently in space, not stacked in time
316
Don’t de-quantify quantifiable data
317
Consistency and Standards
317
Benefits of interface standards
317
Risks of interface standards
318
Standards, guidelines, and rules of thumb
318
When to violate guidelines
319
Consistency and standards across applications
319
Part III
Designing Interaction Details
321
Chapter 15 Searching and Finding: Improving Data Retrieval
323
Storage and Retrieval Systems
324
Storage and Retrieval in the Physical World
324
Everything in its place: Storage and retrieval by location
324
Indexed retrieval
325
Storage and Retrieval in the Digital World
326
Relational Databases versus Digital Soup
330
Organizing the unorganizable
330
Problems with databases
331
The attribute-based alternative
332
Natural Language Output: An Ideal Interface for
Attribute-Based Retrieval
333
Chapter 16 Understanding Undo
335
Users and Undo
335
User mental models of mistakes
336
Undo enables exploration
336
Designing an Undo Facility
337
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Types and Variants of Undo
338
Incremental and procedural actions
3
38
Blind and explanatory Undo
339
Single and multiple Undo
339
Redo
341
Group multiple Undo
342
Other Models for Undo-Like Behavior
343
Comparison: What would this look like?
343
Category-specific Undo
344
Deleted data buffers
346
Versioning and reversion
346
Freezing
348
Undo-Proof Operations
348
Chapter 17 Rethinking Files and Save
349
What’s Wrong with Saving Changes to Files?
350
Problems with the Implementation Model
352
Closing documents and removing unwanted changes
352
Save As
353
Archiving
355
Implementation Model versus Mental Model
355
Dispensing with the Implementation Model
356
Designing with a Unified File Model
357
Automatically saving
358
Creating a copy
359
Naming and renaming
359
Placing and moving
360
Specifying the stored format
360
Reversing changes
361
Abandoning all changes
361
Creating a version
361
A new File menu
362
A new name for the File menu
363
Communicating status
363
Are Disks and File Systems a Feature?
364
Time for Change
365
Chapter 18 Improving Data Entry
367
Data Integrity versus Data Immunity
367
Data immunity
368
What about missing data?
369
Data entry and fudgeability
371
Auditing versus Editing
371
Chapter 19 Pointing, Selecting, and Direct Manipulation
375
Direct Manipulation
375
Pointing Devices
377
Using the mouse
378
Mouse buttons
380
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Pointing and clicking with a mouse
382
Mouse-up and mouse-down events
385
Pointing and the Cursor
386
Pliancy and hinting
386
Selection
390
Command ordering and selection
390
Discrete and contiguous selection
392
Insertion and replacement
395
Visual indication of selection
396
Drag-and-Drop
397
Visual feedback for drag-and-drop
399
Other drag-and-drop interaction issues
402
Control Manipulation
408
Palette Tools
409
Modal tools
409
Charged cursor tools
410
Object Manipulation
411
Repositioning
411
Resizing and reshaping
413
3D object manipulation
415
Object Connection
420
Chapter 20 Window Behaviors
423
PARC and the Alto
423
PARC’s Principles
425
Visual metaphors
425
Avoiding modes
425
Overlapping windows
426
Microsoft and Tiled Windows
427
Full-Screen Applications
427
Multipaned Applications
428
Designing with Windows
430
Unnecessary rooms
430
Necessary rooms
433
Windows pollution
434
Window States
436
MDI versus SDI
437
Chapter 21 Controls
439
Avoiding Control-Laden Dialog Boxes
439
Imperative Controls
440
Buttons
440
Butcons
441
Hyperlinks
442
Selection Controls
443
Check boxes
443
Flip-flop buttons: A selection idiom to avoid
445
Radio buttons
446
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Combutcons
447
List controls
449
Combo boxes
455
Tree controls
457
Entry Controls
457
Bounded and unbounded entry controls
457
Spinners
459
Dials and Sliders
460
Thumbwheels
462
Other bounded entry controls
462
Unbounded entry: Text edit controls
463
Display Controls
468
Text controls
468
Scrollbars
469
Splitters
471
Drawers and levers
472
Chapter 22 Menus
473
A Bit of History
473
The command-line interface
474
Sequential hierarchical menus
474
The Lotus 1-2-3 interface
476
Drop-down and pop-up menus
478
Menus Today: The Pedagogic Vector
479
Standard menus for desktop applications
481
File (or document)
482
Edit
482
Windows
483
Help
483
Optional Menus
484
View
484
Insert
484
Settings
484
Format
484
Tools
485
Menu Idioms
485
Cascading menus
485
Menus
486
The ribbon
487
Bang menus
488
Disabled menu items
489
Checkmark menu items
489
Icons on menus
490
Accelerators
490
Access keys
491
Menus on other platforms
492
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Contents
Chapter 23 Toolbars
493
Toolbars: Visible, Immediate Commands
Toolbars versus Menus
494
Toolbars and Toolbar Controls
495
Icons versus text on toolbars
495
The problem with labeling butcons
496
Explaining Toolbar Controls
496
Balloon help: A first attempt
497
ToolTips
497
Disabling toolbar controls
498
Evolution of the Toolbar
499
State-indicating toolbar controls
499
Menus on toolbars
499
Movable toolbars
500
Customizable toolbars
501
The ribbon
502
Contextual toolbars
503
Chapter 24 Dialogs
505
Appropriate Uses for Dialog Boxes
505
Dialog Box Basics
507
Modal Dialog Boxes
509
Modeless Dialog Boxes
509
Modeless dialog issues
510
Two solutions for better modeless dialogs
510
Four Different Purposes for Dialogs
516
Property dialog boxes
516
Function dialog boxes
517
Process dialog boxes
518
Eliminating process dialogs
520
Bulletin dialog boxes
522
Managing Content in Dialog Boxes
523
Tabbed dialogs
523
Expanding dialogs
526
Cascading dialogs
527
Chapter 25 Errors, Alerts, and Confirmation
529
Error Dialogs
529
Why we have so many error messages
530
What’s wrong with error messages
530
Eliminating error messages
534
Aren’t there exceptions?
536
Improving error messages: The last resort
537
Alert Dialogs: Announcing the Obvious
539
Confirmation Dialog
541
The dialog that cried “Wolf!”
542
Eliminating confirmations
543
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Replacing Dialogs: Rich Modeless Feedback
544
Rich visual modeless feedback
545
Audible feedback
547
Chapter 26 Designing for Different Needs
551
Command Vectors and Working Sets
551
Immediate and pedagogic vectors
552
Working sets and personas
552
Graduating Users from Beginners to Intermediates
553
World vectors and head vectors
553
Memorization vectors
554
Personalization and Configuration
555
Idiosyncratically Modal Behavior
Alan Cooper, Robert Reinmann, David Cronin - About Face 3- The Essentials of Interaction Design (pdf) Page 2