6 - Interaction Bloopers

Abstract

Deeper bloopers are not violations of look-and-feel guidelines, but rather violations of basic UI design principles. Those principles have emerged from research on human perception, reading, information processing, problem solving, and motivation, as well as from decades of experience with interactive computer applications. Interaction bloopers are more important than graphical user interface (GUI) control, navigation, textual, and graphic design and layout bloopers. It is because they are larger in scope, they are harder to identify, they are harder to avoid, and they are harder to correct. Some interaction bloopers concern user interfaces that are poorly focused on the tasks the software is intended to support. Some UIs needlessly expose the implementation, impose unnecessary constraints, or present confusable concepts, distracting users from their goals and impeding their learning of the software. Other bloopers are the result of the unnecessary steps that a user takes to complete the task. There are certain other bloopers that place unnecessary burdens on people's memory, making it hard for people to remember what they are doing or plan to do.