Posted by admin on Jul 24, 2009 in
UI Design I have worked on 3 different CMS theme design and integration, I have noticed lots of loop holes that need to take care in CMS products available In market like joomala, drupal, wordpress
Let’s start with Wordpress…
As WP is not only now stick to BLOGing; but also people are using it as a readymade corporate or company web site, people now a day’s considering WP as a next generation readymade UI for web design (designers may be afraid of this… ), I can say it can be readymade UI that you can just do plug and play…
But still there is lots of loopholes you can find when you design a theme for WP, even when you are integrating theme with wp-admin; it will give you mess and headache for learning more PHP/JS/JQery, there for they need to give flexibility for just importing your HTML directly, then only they can say “do not worry start using it…” , so on with drupal, joomla and all available CMS…
Need to write a lot on this but because of some time constraint I am leaving this toping here for discussion and will talk more on all CMS…
I also want all of yours views on the same…
Tags: CMS, drupal, joomla, UI, usability, wordpress, WP
Posted by admin on Oct 12, 2008 in
UI Design These are ten general principles for user interface design. They are called “heuristics” because they are more in the nature of rules of thumb than specific usability guidelines.
- Visibility of system status
- The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
- Match between system and the real world
- The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
- User control and freedom
- Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
- Consistency and standards
- Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
- Error prevention
- Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
- Recognition rather than recall
- Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
- Flexibility and efficiency of use
- Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
- Aesthetic and minimalist design
- Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
- Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
- Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
- Help and documentation
- Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
Tags: heuristics, usability
