Designing Effective Input

1
Designing Effective Input

• Keng Siau
• College of Business Administration
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln

2
Design Objectives

• Ease of use
• Effectiveness
• Accuracy
• Attractiveness
• Simplicity
• Consistency

3
Design Effective Input

• Four guidelines for form design
• make forms easy to fill out
• ensure that forms meet the purpose for which they
  are designed
• design forms to assure accurate completion
• keep forms attractive

4
Seven Sections of a Form

• Heading
• Identification and access
• Instructions
• Body
• Signature and verification
• Totals
• Comments

5
Three Screen Sections

• Heading Section
• top of the screen
• Body Section
• middle of the screen
• Comments and Instructions Section
• bottom of the screen

6
Good Screen Web Forms Design

• Keep the display simple
• Keep the display presentation consistent
• Facilitate movement among screens and pages
• Design an attractive display

7
Color in Screen Design

• Rules-of-thumb
• use highly contrasting colors for foreground and
  background
• use bright colors for foregrounds
• use less bright colors for backgrounds
• use color to highlight important fields on
  screens
• like colors can mean similar situations
• fields that are important can be colored
  differently from the rest

8
Favorite Colors in Screen Design

• Black on yellow
• Green on white
• Blue on white
• White on blue
• Yellow on black

9
Icons

• pictorial, on-screen representations symbolizing
  computer actions
• serve functions similar to those of words and may
  replace them in many menus
• A Picture is Worth Ten Thousands Words

10
Guidelines for Designing Icons

• shapes should be readily recognizable
• use standard icons
• limit to about twenty icons for a particular
  application
• use them consistently