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Graphical Screen Design

Graphical Screen Design. CRAP – contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity Grids are an essential tool for graphical design Other important graphical screen design concepts visual consistency visual relationships

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Graphical Screen Design

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  1. Graphical Screen Design CRAP – contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity Grids are an essential tool for graphical design Other important graphical screen design concepts visual consistency visual relationships visual organization legibility and readability appropriate imagery navigational cues familiar idioms

  2. The Squint Test • Used to determine what stands out or what elements appear to belong together

  3. CRAP: An Important Tool For Graphical Screen Design • Contrast • make different things different • brings out dominant elements • mutes lesser elements • Repetition • repeat design throughout the interface • consistency • Alignment • visually associate related elements • Proximity • group related elements • separate unrelated elements

  4. Graphical Design • Must account for: • a comprehensible mental image • metaphor (known <-> unknown) • appropriate organization of data, functions, tasks and roles • cognitive model (how do I think it works) • quality appearance characteristics • the “look” • effective interaction sequencing • the “feel” • Sources: • Principle of Effective Visual Communication for GUI design • Marcus in Baecker, Grudin, Buxton and Greenberg • Designing Visual Interfaces • Mullet & Sano, Prentice Hall

  5. Components of Visible Language • Layout • formats, proportions, and grids • Typography • typefaces and typesetting • Imagery • signs, icons, symbols; concrete to abstract • Sequencing • how the interface unfolds scarves: 10.75 hats: 5.43 bold serif fixed italic sans-serif variable Booze!

  6. Components Of Visible Language (2) • Visual identity • unique appearance • Animation • dynamics of display • Color and Texture • convey complex information and pictorial reality

  7. Grids • Horizontal and vertical lines to locate window components • aligns related components • Organization • contrast to bring out dominant elements • grouping of elements by proximity • show organizational structure • alignment • Consistency • location • format • repetition • organization Format of variable contents Widget to widget spacing Message text in Arial 14, left adjusted Standard icon set Window to widget spacing No Ok Fixed components

  8. Message text in Arial 14, left adjusted Standard icon set No Ok Cannot move the file “myfile.doc” to the folder “junk” because the disc is full. ! Ok Uses A Grid: Consistent Do you really want to delete the file “myfile.doc” from the folder “junk”? ? No Ok

  9. Message text in Arial 14, left adjusted Standard icon set No Ok Apply The file was destroyed Cancel No Grid: Inconsistent

  10. Another Grid Example • Two-level Hierarchy • indentation • contrast Logic of organizationalflow Alignment connects visual elements in a sequence Grouping by white space

  11. Visual Consistency: Internal Consistency • Unless there is a compelling reason all elements of the same program follow the same rules and conventions • Application specific grids can be used to enforce this Doh!

  12. Visual Consistency: External Consistency • Follow interface and platform style conventions • Use grids that are platform (e.g., Windows) and widget (e.g., Java Swing) specific • Deviate from these conventions only when there is a clear benefit to the user

  13. External Consistency Violated

  14. Warning Tip of the day: Monday, Mar 12 mmmm mmm mmm ! mmmm mmm mmm Help Dismiss Okay mmmm mmm mmm mmm ? Okay A Tool For Ensuring Consistency: Mumble Text

  15. Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Mmmm: Relationships Between Screen Elements • explicit structure (e.g., the use of frames)

  16. Webforms Bad alignment Poor choice of colors to distinguish labels from editable fields

  17. No regard fororder andorganization IBM's Aptiva Communication Center

  18. Haphazard layoutfrom Mullet & Sano page 105

  19. Repairing a Haphazard layoutfrom Mullet &Sano page 105

  20. Spatial Tensionfrom Mullet & Sano page 72

  21. Using explicit structure as a crutchfrom Mullet & Sano page 31

  22. WebForms Overuse of 3-d effects makes the window unnecessarily cluttered

  23. Relationships Between Screen Elements How do you chose when you cannot discriminate screen elements from each other? GIF Construction Set WS-FTP

  24. Navigational Cues • provide initial focus • direct attention to important, secondary, or peripheral items as appropriate • assist in navigation through material

  25. Redesigning a layout using alignment and factoring from Mullet & Sano Page 119

  26. The importance of negative spacefrom Mullet & Sano page 129

  27. Economy Of Visual Elements • minimize number of controls • include only those that are necessary • eliminate, or relegate others to secondary windows • minimize clutter • so information is not hidden Repairing excessive display densityfrom Mullet & Sano Page 111

  28. Excellent means for factoring related items Economy Of Visual Elements (Tabs)

  29. Excellent means for factoring related items But can be overdone Economy Of Visual Elements (Tabs)

  30. Legibility And Readability Popkin Software's System Architect

  31. Legibility And Readability Time & Chaos These choices must be really important, or are they?

  32. Upper Case Text

  33. Legibility And Readability • Characters, symbols, graphical elements should be easily noticable and distinguishable TEXT SET INCAPITOLS Text set in Helvetica Text set in Braggadocio Text set in Times Roman Text set in Courier

  34. Readable Unreadable Design components to be inviting and attractive Design components to be inviting and attractive Design components to be inviting and attractive Design components to be inviting and attractive Legibility And Readability • Proper use of typography • 1-2 typographical effects (typeface or typography) - 3 max • Font types, normal, italics, bold, underline • 1-3 fonts sizes max Large Medium Small Large Medium Small

  35. Readable Design components to be inviting and attractive Design components to be inviting and attractive Legibility And Readability • typesetting • point size • word and line spacing • line length • indentation • color Unreadable: Design components to be easy to interpret and understand. Design components to be inviting and attractive

  36. Legibility And Readability Grayed-out example text hard to read.Why not make it black? Regional Preferences applet in Windows95 Text orientation makes it difficult to read

  37. Imagery • Signs, icons, symbols • right choice within spectrum from concrete to abstract • Icon design very hard • except for most familiar, always label them Booze!

  38. An Example Of Why Icon Design Is Hard • Novell GroupWise 5.1: • What do these images mean? • No tool tips included • One of the tabs is a glossary explaining these images! Which one?

  39. Imagery (Continued) • Image position and type should be related • image “family” • don’t mix metaphors • Consistent and relevant image use • not gratuitous • identifies situations, offerings...

  40. Choosing levels of abstractionfrom Mullet & Sano Page 174

  41. Refined vs excessive literal metaphors from Mullet & Sano page 25

  42. Idioms • Familiar ways of using GUI components • appropriate for casual to expert users • builds upon computer literacy • must be applied carefully in walk up and use systems • Some examples Files Window manipulation StandardTypographic controls Toolbars and tooltips What you see is what you get displays Pulldown menus Cascading menu Dialog box item

  43. How To Choose Between Widgets • 1 What components must be in the display • necessary visual affordances • frequent actions • direct manipulation for core activities • buttons/forms/toolbar/special tools for frequent/immediate actions • menus/property window for less frequent actions • secondary windows for rare actions

  44. MS-PowerPoint MS-Word How To Choose Between Widgets (Continued) • 2 How are components related? • organize related items as “chunks” • 3 What are familiar and expected idioms? • cross application look and feel

  45. Widgets And Complexity • how can window navigation be reduced? • avoid long paths • avoid deep hierarchies

  46. What You Now Know • Grids are an essential tool for graphical design • Important visual concepts include • visual consistency • repetition • visual organization • contrast, alignment and navigational cues • visual relationships • proximity and white space • familiar idioms • legibility and readability • typography • appropriate imagery

  47. Interface Design and Usability Engineering • Articulate: • who users are • their key tasks Brainstorm designs Refined designs Completed designs Goals: Task centered system design Participatory design User-centered design Graphical screen design Interface guidelines Style guides Psychology of everyday things User involvement Representation & metaphors Participatory interaction Task scenario walk-through Evaluatetasks Usability testing Heuristic evaluation Field testing Methods: high fidelity prototyping methods low fidelity prototyping methods Throw-away paper prototypes Products: User and task descriptions Testable prototypes Alpha/beta systems or complete specification

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