Analytics for Chemistry, Biology and Production:
First think about ALL possible answers, before you ask any question. P. Forster
Peter ForsterHome The author of this page is independent and has no commercial intention ! Diese Seite in Deutsch.

User-Interface:

PREFACE:   Style guides and their use/value:
What will the value be of a 'Style guide', written by ten or hundred IT-professors, each of them interviewed one thousand possible users, if they have asked the wrong questions?
You don't agree with me?   Sure, — then you can easily answer the question: 'What will a native from the folk of the “Wasischdas" (in the middle of Africa) answer you, if you are asking him questions about the use of the Proton, Neutron, and the Electron' ?
I know it is very difficult to ask (find) the right questions. I believe, it is a special kind of an art of social communication. You surely know that there are so called 'open questions' and 'closed questions'. But are you also knowing that there is a third kind of questions? Yes, I mean 'open questions' which are in reality 'closed questions' — I call them 'disguised closed questions'. An 'open question' is in reality 'closed', when, what ever risen why, the responder has only two choices to answer, — the one or the other. Additionally, possible reasons are, for example, if the questioner has given him only two answers he can choose from, or he has never thought about alternatives, or he is not knowing any alternatives, or he is thinking that we have always done it this way, or he has given up to thinking about other ways(answers), and so on.                          (With time, I will explain more precisely)
LESSON 1:   The 'Knigge' of the User-Interface.                       ( Adolph F. Freiherr von Knigge)
A 'Style guide' what is not paying attention to only one of the following principles, is of absolutely minor use !
The following principles are the result of programming for customers during more then 15 years, and having a lot of discussions with them about how a program has to react to user input and how the questions, the input, the error messages, and all other information have to be presented, to be of help for the costumer and not a tool, that drives him, slowly but surely, crazy.
The little “Forster of the User-Interface”:
  1. The program has to be written for the customer's needs and NOT for the programmer's needs (to do his job as easy as possible!).
  2. The customer deserves your respect and courtesy.
  3. You have to give the customer, when ever possible, a 'handle'(parameter) to validate his doing, and especially, the doing of the computer (your program/ the particular analysis/etc.) !
  4. Your program has the function to help the customer to do his work, and not to punish him, with your (or the style guide's) kind how he has to operate your program !
  5. Thinking is hard work !
  6. The programmer has to make the live easier for the customer, and not for him self.
  7. The program has to be as flexible as possible (without being overloaded), not the costumer !
  8. Every mouse-klick is a klick to much.  —  And: There is always a mouse-klick.
  9. Every user-input is an input to much.
  10. Every mouse-klick and every user-input is a possible source of a mistake.
  11. Error messages has to be written for 'everybody', and not for the academics.
  12. To many windows at once are the death of every program.
  13. Use, when ever possible, a button in place of a menu entry or a 'toolbar'-entry.
  14. . . . .                                                                 (it will be expanded)
LESSON 2:   The explanations.
As you can see, there is nothing magic, normal thinking and interpreting the 'Knigge' is enough !
Every axiom seems to be so simple and understood by its self, why are you not applying it to your programs?  Why so many 'style guide' doesn't care of it!
You are wrong, if you think, that one axiom of the lessen above is meaning/telling quasi the same as an axiom before. That's probably why it is necessarily to explain them more precisely.
(Please give me time to do it)


P. Forster Peter Forster: Software Development & Consulting
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