Werner Randelshofer’s Blog

‘Red tape’ is a term for redundant paperwork which occurs in overly regulated organizations.

A user interface shouldn’t impose any redundant work to the user. It should aim to minimize the amount of physical and mental effort which is required to perform a task.

Physical effort:

I have found an excerpt from the book ‘Designing from both sides of the screen’, which puts it nicely by stating that we should treat every click as sacred.

Counting Mouse clicks is a good metrics for user interface efficiency.

How many clicks does it take…

…to find an address in an address book?

…to create a hyperlink in a web-page?

…to select all items in a list?

…to search and replace text on multiple pages?

Mental effort:

Seven out of the Ten Usabilty Heuristics by Jakob Nielsen, are about reducing mental efforts:

#1 “Visibility of system status”

#2 “Match between system and the real world”

#4 “Consistency and standards”

#6 “Recognition rather than recall”

#8 “Aestethic and minimalist design”

#9 “Help users recognice, diagnose, and recover from errors”

#10 “Help and documentation”.

Note to myself: The next time I create a window or a webpage, I need to

…make all tasks that can be performed visible on the page, without relying that the user figures out that he/she can open popup menu on some blank area of the window or webpage

…make the system think for the end-user, like Wordpress does, when it gives me a handy link to articles that I haven’t finished yet

Maybe I should think about user interfaces being like a good butler, who is not just resourceful, but also helpful and – maybe – sometimes even a bit charming?