Efficacy and Need for User Interface Design

Many technological innovations rely upon User Interface Design to elevate theirtechnical complexity to a usable product. Technology alone may not win useracceptance and subsequent marketability. The User Experience, or how the userexperiences the end product, is the key to acceptance. And that is where UserInterface Design enters the design process. While product engineers focus on thetechnology, usability specialists focus on the user interface. For greatest efficiency andcost effectiveness, this working relationship should be maintained from the start of aproject to its rollout.User Interface Design increases the intuitiveness, efficiency, and comfort level with aproduct, which translates into product acceptance and use. One requires both goodtechnology and usability for a successful product launch. Primarily, userinterface design revolves around the ideas of Information Architecture and Usability Study. Their brief are described below:

• Information Architecture
  

Information Architecture is a science and an approach towards designing clear, understandable communications by giving care to structure, context, and presentationof data and information. The goal of information architecture is to enable users to find the information they are seeking in a clear manner which is done by organizing theinformation for efficient navigation, layout and search functionality. Well-planned architecture is a great boon both for consumers and the producers. Accessing a sitefor the first time, consumers can quickly understand it effortlessly. They can quicklyfind the information they need, thereby reducing time wasted on both finding information and not finding information. Producers of web-sites also benefit becausethey know where to place the new content without disrupting the existing content andsite structure. Information Architecture is not about graphic design or programming or userexperience testing. Rather it is a mediator solution which helps create road-map for thedevelopment of an application.The job of an information architect can beformulated as a person, who: • Determines what content and functionality the site will contain • Specifies how users will find information in the site by defining its organization,navigation, labeling, and searching systems • Maps out how the site will accommodate change and growth over time.

• Usability Study

Usability is a multidimensional attribute that relates to the impact a product has on itsend-users. In general it refers to the effectiveness and the efficiency with which acustomer can do their tasks with the product, and their overall satisfaction with thatprocess. Usability is a key design and marketing concept meaning the extent to whicha product is safe, comfortable, effective, and efficient. Usability refers to the ease withwhich a User Interface can be used by its intended audience to achieve defined goals. It incorporates number of factors such as design, functionality, structure, information architecture, and more. Usability can be measured objectively via performance errorsand productivity, and subjectively via user preferences and interface characteristics.Web design features that affect usability include navigation design and content layout.Remarkable diversity of human abilities, backgrounds, motivations, personalities, cultures and work styles are the challenges faced by interface designers.To develop high quality, there are three keywords that the crossdisciplinary interface development team needs to keep in mind, which are: Usability, Applicability and Utility. By Usability, we imply factors such as speed of learning, rateof errors by users, retention over time, subjective satisfaction of the user. ByApplicability, we mean that the interface is accepted and appreciated with peoplecoming from wide culturally diverse groups, from different age groups, possessing different cognitive and perceptual abilities, having different personality styles. By Utility,we mean that the interface should be useful and should satisfy the need of the usersthat the interface is intended for. This is one measure, which is most important to gain customer satisfaction and appreciation. Jakob Nielsen, usability guru has proposed 10 set of heuristics to evaluate websites and they are globally accepted. Click here to go through them.

Thus, as evident Interface Design is a highly specialized and creative field encompassing many areas of study , which at times does get driven by sheer common sense.

-Arpit-