Grant Consulting - The Humble UI

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Technology designs should reflect their place in the lives of the people that use them.

Humility is a good start.

Technology is not the master.

It is only a tool.
It should not dictate how people work.
Good technology will be remembered only by how quickly and easily people can use it.
Technology by itself is irrelevant.

The UI should not make a show of itself.

It should never waste people's time by presuming to entertain them unless asked to do so.
Upon first appearance, the UI should not make people wait any longer than necessary to explain what it might do for them.
The UI should have a clean and modest appearance.
Any color and graphics should have the goal of being pleasant and making people feel comfortable.
Color and graphics should not demand to be the center of attention.
Color and graphics must not make it harder to read text.
The less time people have to spend looking at the UI to get something done, the better.

The UI should not presume to be clever.

Any menus, links, or other navigation should be completely straightforward and concise.
Buttons or controls should plainly convey what they are for and how they can be used.
No part of the UI should draw more attention to itself than what is needed for people to quickly recognize whether to use that part or to ignore it.
Those parts of the UI that are not being used should be ignorable and stay out of the way.

The UI should 'speak' softly.

Messages must be polite. They should not blame or scold people.
Messages should avoid appearing in red or with alarm symbols.
Messages should gracefully explain what has happened and concisely point to a course of action that will help.
A confirmation message should allow people to indicate if it is not wanted again.

The UI should follow the rules and do what is expected.

Most of the things that an interface does have been done before.
UI conventions should be broken only if there is very good reason to do so.
UI designers should know and follow rules for checkboxes, radio buttons, text fields, and other standard GUI components.
Web page designers should have consistent colors for link and non-link text.
People that run intranets should create and enforce standard design templates for page layouts.

The UI should answer questions respectfully.

Help text should be as short as possible, and speak plainly. Most people don't want everything explained, just what they need for their task.
Documentation should use examples to get the point across quickly.
People use help in different ways. Offer indices, search, and topic-based documentation.
All forms of help and documentation should be cross-linked and cross-referenced.

The UI should avoid making people look or feel stupid.

Support as many 'undos' and 'redos' as possible.
Consider using implicit saves. That is, go ahead and save people's work constantly. (Quicken does this with accounting entries.)
Avoid technical language. Speak the way people talk with each other about the work.

Posted March 13, 2003
By Joe Grant

the180 - The Humble UI