Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
What the critics say about Jakob Nielsen
"The world's leading expert on Web usability " -- U.S. News & World Report
"The king of usability" -- Internet Magazine
"Perhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internet" -- Financial Times
"The guru of Web page usability" -- The New York Times
"One of the world's foremost experts in Web usability" -- Business Week
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
cross 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.Synopsis
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.Synopsis
ng 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.About the Author
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.
Nielsen Norman Group, Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
Table of Contents
Preface
Preface to the First Printing
List of Contributors
1. Executive Summary: Coordinating User Interfaces by Jakob Nielsen
2. The Dimensions of Consistency by Wendy A. Kellogg
3. A Cost Benefit Analysis for Corporate User Interface Standards: What Price to Pay for a Consistent "Look and Feel"? by Daniel Rosenberg
4. Coordinating Consistency of User Interfaces, Code, Online Help, and Documentation with Multilingual/Multitarget Software Specification by Gary Perlman
5. Achieving Consistency for the Macintosh by Bruce Tognazzini
6. Developing the XUI Style by Michael Good
7. Consistency as Process by Richard Wolf
8. New Ways to Consistent Interfaces by Ianne Howards Koritzinsky
9. Tools for Generating Consistent User Interfaces by Charles Wiecha, William Bennett, Stephen Boies, and John Gould
Bibliography
Index