USER INTERFACE DESIGN
To develop a usable UI, an IS development team should realize that users are a vital part of the team,
and multi-disciplinary design team members are likely to raise useful ideas from many points of view.
Clarifying UI requirements helps a team to understand what the system should be like in detail using
design guidelines and standards that are trustworthy and easy to follow. UI and usability design can be
separated into two styles: process oriented and product-oriented and software design tools assist
development teams as well as UI evaluation by users and UI experts. In this study, there are two parts in
UI design: (I) THE UI DESIGN PROCESS; (II) THE UI PRODUCT CHARACTERISTICS.
UI Design process
From its beginning as an iterative and prototyping UI design approach, UCD has been developed to
become a design method which ensures that the final product is developed from the users’ standpoint
and achieves the users’ requirements; it is a method combining four main steps (see Figure 1). First,
understand and specify the context of use – this process is important towards understanding the range
of physical, task social, organizational, and environmental aspects of the users. Systems analysts have a
number of techniques to help understand the context of use, such as surveys, observation, task analysis,
and interviewing. Second, specify the user and organizational requirements – designers and users must
consider what the attributes of the UI requirements are, then the goals of each attribute, and finally the
evaluation method for each attribute. The output of this stage is the UI requirements specifications – the
combination of requirements and measuring the quality of the UI. Third, produce design solutions – the
designers and users create a UI together that meets the requirements. Finally, evaluate the design
against the requirements – this process will compare the quality of the UI with the original UI
requirements to determine whether the latter have been met. If the results of the prototype evaluation
meet the goals, the prototype can be used as the final product. On the other hand, if the prototype is
not satisfactory, then the process must be started again.
UI design product characteristics:
In Marcus provided the meaning of a user interface: “A computer-mediated means to facilitate
communication between human beings or between a human being and an artifact. The user interface
embodies both physical and communicative aspects of input and output, or interactive activity”.
Additionally, the UI consists of metaphors, mental models, navigation, interaction and appearance
The objective of data gathering is to understand how a designer designs or selects each UI element on
the basis of information from the users.
Conclusion:
From the UCD approach and using UI elements, the design team carried out these tasks at a level that
appropriate with the team for this specific project. Their main goals were to complete the project with
quality and on-time. Initially, they may not have known what design the UIs should take and how to use
UCD, but they understood that important contributions and positive responses from the users were
crucial in this approach. Therefore, they paid special attention to the users as well as providing their
prior knowledge and experience towards designing the system