Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency

In the years since Jakob Nielsen's classic collection on interface consistency first appeared, much has changed, and much has stayed the same. On the one hand, there's been exponential growth in the opportunities for following or disregarding the principles of interface consistency-more computers, more applications, more users, and of course the vast expanse of the Web. On the other, there are the principles themselves, as persistent and as valuable as ever.

In these contributed chapters, you'll find details on many methods for seeking and enforcing consistency, along with bottom-line analyses of its benefits and some warnings about its possible dangers. Most of what you'll learn applies equally to hardware and software development, and all of it holds real benefits for both your organization and your users.

* Begins with a new preface by the collection's distinguished editor.
* Details a variety of methods for attaining interface consistency, including central control, user definitions, exemplary applications, shared code, and model analysis.
* Presents a cost-benefits analysis of organizational efforts to promote and achieve consistency.
* Examines and appraises the dimensions of consistency-consistency within an application, across a family of applications, and beyond.
* Makes the case for some unexpected benefits of interface consistency while helping you avoid the risks it can sometimes entail.
* Considers the consistency of interface elements other than screen design.
* Includes case studies of major corporations that have instituted programs to ensure the consistency of their products.

Audience: HCI practitioners and web application designers involved with usability methods.

In the years since Jakob Nielsen's classic collection on interface consistency first appeared, much has changed, and much has stayed the same. On the one hand, there's been exponential growth in the opportunities for following or disregarding the principles of interface consistency-more computers, more applications, more users, and of course the vast expanse of the Web. On the other, there are the principles themselves, as persistent and as valuable as ever.

In these contributed chapters, you'll find details on many methods for seeking and enforcing consistency, along with bottom-line analyses of its benefits and some warnings about its possible dangers. Most of what you'll learn applies equally to hardware and software development, and all of it holds real benefits for both your organization and your users.

Features

• Begins with a new preface by the collection's distinguished editor.
  
• Details a variety of methods for attaining interface consistency, including central control, user definitions, exemplary applications, shared code, and model analysis.
  
• Presents a cost-benefits analysis of organizational efforts to promote and achieve consistency.
  
• Examines and appraises the dimensions of consistency-consistency within an application, across a family of applications, and beyond.
  
• Makes the case for some unexpected benefits of interface consistency while helping you avoid the risks it can sometimes entail.
  
• Considers the consistency of interface elements other than screen design.
  
• Includes case studies of major corporations that have instituted programs to ensure the consistency of their products.

Booknews

Techniques to ensure consistency in user interfaces in single software packages and across products. Illustrative case studies from several major companies are presented. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Called the world's leading expert on Web usability by US News and World Report, Jakob Nielsen today serves as user advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group. In the course of a career in which he held influential positions at Sun Microsystems, Bellcore, and IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, Nielsen founded the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 58 US patents, many of which focus on ways to make the Internet easier to use. He has written the Alertbox column on Web usability since 1995 and is the author of Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity and Usability Engineering, plus eight other books.