Design Principles

Design Principles

Design Principles are general abstractions of different elements of design. In short they are descriptions of different ways to design interaction. They are: Affordances, Consistency, Constraints, Feedback, Mapping and Visibility.

Affordance

The affordance of an object is the attribute that allows people to understand how to use it, for example.

What do you feel when you see a button. A feeling that you should push it. This is because the design of the button gives it that attribute. While software and other digital interfaces are virtual and thus do not have a physical form, you can still use affordance to help show actions and effects in a virtual world

Consistency

Consistency is creating interfaces that have similar graphics and operations for similar tasks.

Do this:

Not:

Consistent Interfaces are easier to use. If a interface is not consistent it can cause frustration because of unexpected behaviour

Constraints

Constraints should be put into practice to limit the options a user has, allowing them to only do actions that are appropriate or can be processed, stopping them from doing impossible tasks.

An example of this:

Twitter Greys out the ability to Tweet until you fill in the box as a constraint.

Feedback

Feedback is sending back information to the user about system changes and states to the users. The user needs to know if what they did affects anything. Feedback can be physical, visual and audio.

It ranges from when the environment changes when you push a button in game, to when the controller you are holding vibrates when you take damage to when you hear the game play music when you obtain an item.

Mapping

Mapping is placing logical relationship between controls where they are and their real life counterparts. A good goal is to map together controls that do similar actions together, sometimes even on the same dial

Visibility

Here is an object. How does it work, what does it do when I use it, what do i see?

Visibility is very similar to affordance but it operates on a physical level, instead of including all sensed.