Error Messages Displays Interface Evaluation

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Error MessagesDisplaysInterface Evaluation
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Error Messages for the Product

• Be as specific and precise as possible.
• Be constructive indicate what needs to be done.
• Use a positive tone avoid condemnation.
• Choose user-centered phrasing
• Consider multiple levels of messages
• Keep consistent grammatical form, terminology,
  and abbreviations.
• Keep consistent visual format and placement.

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Attaining Good Error Messages

• Establish a message quality-control group.
• Include messages in the design phase.
• Place all messages in a file.
• Review messages during development.
• Attempt to eliminate the need for messages.
• Carry out acceptance tests.
• Collect frequency data for each message.
• Review and revise messages over time.

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Colour Guidelines - Benefits

• Soothes or strikes the eye
• Accents an uninteresting display
• Facilitates subtle discriminations in complex
  displays
• Emphasizes the logical organization of
  information
• Draws attention to warnings
• Evokes emotional reactions of joy, excitement,
  fear, or anger.

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Colour Guidelines

• Use colour conservatively limit the number and
  amount of colours.
• Recognize the power of colour to speed or slow
  tasks.
• Ensure colour coding supports the task.
• Have colour coding appear with minimal user
  effort.
• Place colour coding under user control.
• Design for monochrome first.
• Use colour to help in formatting.

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Colour Guidelines - Guidelines

• Be consistent in colour coding.
• Be alert to common expectations about colour
  coding.
• Use colour changes to indicate status changes.
• Use colour in graphic displays for greater
  information density.

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Colour Guidelines - Dangers

• Resolution may degrade with colour displays.
• Colour pairings may cause problems.
• Colour fidelity may degrade on other hardware.
• Printing or conversion to other media may be a
  problem.

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Seeing Red? Feeling Blue?

• "Colour can affect your mood and even your
  metabolism, according to various studies."

RED is the most dominant of all colours. It tends
to raise blood pressure, pulse rate and even your
temperature an excellent environment for
creation.
YELLOW is a high visibility colour said to have a
favourable effect on human metabolism. It tends
to appear brighter then white. When children are
asked to draw a happy picture, they most often
draw it in yellow.
WHITE is the perfectly balanced colour, clear and
natural in its influence. White instantly
suggests goodness and purity.
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Seeing Red? Feeling Blue?Cont.
VIOLET is the colour of luxury and sensuality.
Violet creates an unusual atmosphere - unexpected
and lavish.
GREEN represents a withdrawal from stimulus.
Greens and blue-greens tend to reduce nervous and
muscular tension.
BLUE has qualities opposite to red. It can lower
blood pressure and pulse rate.
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The  Energy   of   Colour http//www.aletapippin.
com/articles/energy.htm

• An entire field has been developed surrounding
  the psychology of color in marketing. For
  instance, fast food restaurants are decorated
  with vivid reds and oranges, encouraging diners
  to eat quickly and leave. Bright primary colors
  are used for toys, books and childrens web sites
  because young children prefer them and respond
  more positively than to pastels or muted colors.
• In North American mainstream culture, the
  following colors are associated with certain
  qualities or emotions

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The  Energy  of  Colour.

• Red excitement, strength, sex, passion, speed,
  danger
• Blue (listed as the most popular color) trust,
  reliability, belonging, coolness
• Yellow warmth, sunshine, cheer, happiness
• Orange playfulness, warmth, vibrant
• Green nature, fresh, cool, growth, abundance
• Purple royal, spirituality, dignity
• Pink soft, sweet, nurture, security
• White pure, virginal, clean, youthful, mild
• Black sophistication, elegant, seductive,
  mystery
• Gold prestige, expensive
• Silver prestige, cold, scientific

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Why Evaluate

• Understand how products/users behave in the real
  world
• Does the design meet the users needs?
• Compare Designs
• Engineer towards a goal
• Iteratively improving the design
• Check conformance to a standard.
• Is it up to snuff

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Types of Evaluation

• Observing and Monitoring (passive)
• Cameras
• Personal observation
• Collecting keystroke (task) data.
• Collecting User's Opinions
• Interviews
• Surveys
• Experimentation and Benchmarking
• Quantitative analysis of data
• Very scientific approach
• Hypothesis testing
• Controlling variables

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Types of Evaluation Cont.

• Interpretive Evaluation
• Informal way of collecting data
• Users
• Products
• Natural setting
• Attempts to extract info from findings of
  evaluation
• No formal guidelines for users, product
• No goals are set for the evaluation.
• A look and see what happens kind of approach.

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Types of Evaluation Cont.

• Predictive Evaluation
• Predict how users will behave without testing the
  product on users.
• Evaluator uses
• Inspection
• Simulation
• Expert Reviewing
• Task Analysis
• to predict problems with users
• Usually involves a low-level prototype or mock-up