In 1994, usability guru Jakob Nielsen came up with a list of 10 general principles for designing user interfaces. They're as relevant today as they were then.
- Keep users informed about what's going on.
- Follow real-world conventions. Use concepts and language familiar to the user.
- Enable users to easily undo mistakes.
- Be consistent and follow platform conventions.
- Prevent errors.
- Minimise the load on the user's memory. Make things obvious.
- Cater to both inexperienced and experienced users.
- Omit what's unnecessary.
- Make it easy for users to understand, diagnose and recover from errors.
- Provide specific, task-oriented documentation.
I'll dig into some of these in more detail in future posts.