Usability Checklist Guidelines
April 9th, 2008 | Posted in Tips, Usability |
- Diversity or Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
- Main navigation loads fast. Provide detailed explanation of topics and navigation options for new users. Provide text index for quick access to all pages. Ensure pages are readable in many formats.
- Speak the Users’ Language
- The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
- Consistency
- Consistency in menus, help screens, colour, layout, capitalisation, fonts and sequences of actions.
- Informative Feedback
- Informative Feedback within a reasonable time for example rollover buttons. Inform users of where they are.
- Recognition rather than Recall
- To minimize the users’ memory load making objects, actions, and options visible; for example navigation elements that are obvious and distinguishable
- Error Prevention
- For example menu selections or inform of required fields at the top of the form.
- Web Conventions
- For example underlined links, position help link at the top right corner or use common terminology
- Site Structure
- For example clearly marked exits, shortcuts and logical site hierarchy
- Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
- Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
- Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors
- Provide good error messages in plain language, precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
- Help and Documentation
- Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
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