Heuristic: Consistency and Standards Good example: computer application toolbars MS word: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By07mY578A4qTkw5LUcxY0hPTFU/view?usp=sharing Firefox: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By07mY578A4qOTZrd21DOVJIVzA/view?usp=sharing Pixelmator: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By07mY578A4qeXkyZHNyMUo1UTQ/view?usp=sharing When you open up a desktop application, the menu bar has a number of options. Even though many various companies release these applications, they all maintain a fairly consistent set of standard labels. The furthest-left is usually the...

A Good Example of Constraints: The Harvard Lampoon Subscribe page The web page to subscribe to the Harvard Lampoon magazine is an example of good use of constraints that allow that user to only submit valid responses when filling out the form to subscribe. For example, when you say that you want to give...

  Design Concept: Visibility of System Status Good example: On Slack, a messaging app for teams, this screenshot is what displays after you login on Slack. It shows a bolded Loading…and even includes a pithy statement wishing the user a good day, which shows Slack’s fun, team personality. This allows the user to know...

Design Concept: Visibility of System Status Item that exemplifies design concept: the door mechanism shown below. There are a lot of locked doors around Harvard’s campus (and really any institution that has restricted areas)—but sometimes it is hard to tell which doors are locked and which are not. We’ve all tried to open a...

Apple prides itself on producing a seamless ecosystem of devices. Jony Ive, the design lead at Apple, sticks to particular design when it comes to products, which demonstrates the resonance of this ecosystem: the design of one apple product complements the next. This is why your gold Macbook matches your gold iPhone, and why...

Design Heuristic: Visibility of System Status “The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.” Hall of fame: This is a tube amp. It’s a gorgeous piece of equipment, and makes music sound otherworldly. What’s really cool about it, though, is that the visibility of...

Consistency and Standards From the course website: Consistency and Standards refers to the idea that products our to be consistent with industry standards and with other versions of the the product (on different platforms, for example). Sometimes these two different types of consistency can come in conflict and designers will have to choose whether...

Design concept: Affordances The Wi-Fi page in Settings designed by Apple is a great example of a feature that implements the design concept of Affordances successfully. In order to turn on wifi a user can either swipe the button or tap it. When WiFi is not on, it will be grayed out, and when...

When thinking of the concept of Match between System and Real World, it often seems like a straight forward point — we want the users to be able to use our system and engage with it in and easy and intuitive way. In fact, all designers and engineers are also users in their own...

Design Heuristic: Recognition rather than recall (One of the original 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design by Jakob Nielsen) Item that exemplifies the heuristic: Mac keyboard cover               This is a macbook keyboard cover. If you look closely, you see that it is not a standard keyboard....