8 Characteristics Of Successful User Interfaces

核心提示： Apple has identified three key things people want to do with photos on their iPhone, and provides buttons to accomplish each of them in the photo

Apple has identified three key things people want to do with photos on their iPhone, and provides buttons to accomplish each of them in the photo controls.

8. Forgiving

Nobody is perfect, and people are bound to make mistakes when using your software or website. How well you can handle those mistakes will be an important indicator of your software’s quality. Don’t punish the user — build a forgiving interface to remedy issues that come up.

A forgiving interface is one that can save your users from costly mistakes. For example, if someone deletes an important piece of information, can they easily retrieve it or undo this action? When someone navigates to a broken or nonexistent page on your website, what do they see? Are they greeted with a cryptic error or do they get a helpful list of alternative destinations?

Trashed the wrong email by mistake? Gmail lets you quickly undo your last action.

To conclude…

Working on achieving some of these characteristics may actually clash with working on others. For example, by trying make an interface clear, you may be adding too many descriptions and explanations, that end up making the whole thing big and bulky. Cutting stuff out in an effort to make things concise may have the opposite effect of making things ambiguous. Achieving a perfect balance takes skill and time, and each solution will depend on a case by case basis.

What do you think? Do you disagree with any of these characteristics or have any more to add? I’d love to read your comments.