Tutorial 14

Converting to Graphical User Interfaces: Design Guidelines for Success

Arlene F. Aucella, AFA Design Consultants

Sunday, May 7

Objective

Participants will learn to (1) define ease-of-use and set behavioral criteria for usability, (2) understand that principles of good design are just as important for graphical user interfaces as they are for traditional text-based interfaces, (3) identify the pros and cons of graphical user interfaces, and (4) make better design decisions on icons, menus, and dialog boxes.

Content

This tutorial reviews published research, guidelines, and case studies on ease-of-use for graphical user interfaces. Many text-based user interfaces are currently being converted into graphical user interface platforms. This tutorial emphasizes utilizing graphical user interface components without undermining good principles of design. Topics include windows, icons, menus, and dialog boxes. Usability aspects of commercial graphical interfaces, such as Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and OSF Motif, are compared and evaluated. Class discussion focuses on issues such as non-standard convertions, iconic vs. text-only buttons coding clickable areas, and reasons for providing prompts. A class exercise gives participants skill in converting an application from a non-graphical menu and form interface into a pull-down menu and dialog box interface.

Audience

This intermediate-level tutorialis intended for people with experience in the design of user interfaces in a real-world environment. It assumes that participants have experience using at least one commercial graphical user interface and several applications.

Presentation

Lecture, video, exercises

Instructor

Arlene F. Aucella is a principal and owner of AFA Design Consultants. She has designed, tested, and evaluated user interfaces for many systems, including applications in office automation, graphics, finance, communications, medical products, network management and command and control systems. She has also done extensive work preparing user interface guidelines for screen-based and voice-based systems. She currently serves on ISO and ANSI committees to develop standards for user interfaces.

Keith Instone / instone@acm.org / 95-01-05