Effective display designs must provide all the necessary data in the proper sequence to carry out the task. Identify a recent personal user experience where it either was very clear or very unclear about what the sequence of steps was necessary to complete a task. What made that experience memorable?

This is a non-software interface, but I was trying to connect my laptop to a university classroom projector. There were multiple video cords in the vicinity and it wasn’t clear if I had plugged my laptop into the right display port. After that, there is a panel of buttons that do not clearly instruct how to display the alternate display. All the while, my teacher seemed to be having an anxiety attack over how to make the projector switch inputs. The UA IT team could make the steps outlined more clearly with simple labeling.

List a few reasons for using animation in display design.

Getting attention, explaining things, and making things unique or expressive.

List a few common mistakes of web-based display of information.

One mistake is not breaking up a large amount of information. For example in a form with fifteen fields it would be nice to see them grouped up by what’s related to prevent overload, but this is rarely the case. Also, important information is not distinguished from other information. Finally, some information is overly distracting or disrupts the flow of operation.

Color displays are attractive to users and can often improve task performance, but the danger of misuse is high. List five guidelines for using color and give an example of each.

Use color for specific purposes: Make warnings always orange for example. Avoid overuse of saturated colors: Don’t go to the extreme of every color because it’s distracting. Don’t use it in search: It is distracting when the user is scanning the page for elements, so only use one color for elements the user needs to scan through. Use color consistently: for example, if you’ve been using orange for warnings in your program, don’t switch to blue.

For the following three items, find the problems in each of the following error messages produced by a source code compiler. Briefly state your reasoning and suggest a better message.

SYNTAX ERROR

Syntax error at line 8: “foo = bar” Assignment of a variable outside of scope.

The error message should tell the user exactly what was wrong with the syntax

INCORRECTLY FORMED RHS OF EXPRESSION. BAILING OUT ON LINE 6.

Incorrect right hand side at line 6: “foo = int” you can’t assign a type to a variable.

The user needs to know why the right hand side was incorrectly formed.

ILLEGAL OPERATION. PROCESS KILLED!!!

Illegal operation. Exiting operation.

My reasoning is that, there is no reason to alarm the user or make them feel like they did something wrong. They need to know which operation is illegal so they can correct the problem.

Describe some guidelines that can be used to avoid falling into the trap of implementing anthropomorphic characteristics into an interface.

Don’t name anything in an application after yourself or a celebrity or Jesus so that you don’t form a strange relationship with it.