When designing for your own projects or giving feedback for other designers, it is important to have heuristics or rules of thumb to evaluate the designs.
There are great 10 heuristics developed by Norman Nielsen group. It is a great source of general rules. In the Human-Computer Interaction course I took on Coursera these 10 heuristics were devided into 3 groups- Understanding, Action and Feedback.
In this article, I will cover the three understanding category heuristics.
The first one is Consistency. According to the NN Group the definition of “consistency and standards”:
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
I would say that that means that the user meet the same experience inside your applications and with the applications for similar purposes from the similar area.
An example of consistency is the panel in MS Office products- it is consistent all over their products so that the users are used to find the features in the similar tabs.
For me consistency means also that different things are signified/identified differently. Here is an example from airbnb where two different options (invite friends as users and invite friends to be host) are shown using the same icon- with the present. It was somehow confusing if you are not familiar with the platform.
I would also say that the similar experience over all channels and devices from mobile to desktop is also a must. Th site sbb.ch (the swiss railways) does a great job creating a consistent experience on desktop and mobile app.
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
The terms and pictures used in the application should be familiar to the user. Here an example from Apple iTunes where the terms are clearly marked with the icons familiar to the user.
In the Duolinguo app for language learning the exercises are shown in categories. The icons for the categories are somewhat unclear for me and do not always relate to the meaning.
A nice example of the good signification is again the sbb.ch site. It shows the number of train changes during the trip with the dots on the line- simple and clear.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
And again, the sbb.ch website provides a great example of minimalistic design. Here for me it is unclear why the made several layers of the navigation? The navigation appears in three different places- small on the top left, then bigger little bit down the line and then top to the right. Maybe that could be reduced to two places.
And speaking of conventions- why is the logo on the top right? I think it is expected to be on the top left for the most of the websites.
Another great example is airbnb. It has a very minimalistic and simple website. But for me it is unclear why to place such a huge banner with airbnb plus right on the top? It is kind of irrelevant if you search for the accommodation in the certain city. And the suggestions on the start page seem very random and too much categories for me. The user scrolls down (infinite scrolling) and can see suggestions grouped in categories which are not always clear and understandable. Kind of too much suggestions on the single page.
ANd what are your favourite examples? Best practices for understanding?
