Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules for Designing Better User Interfaces

Ben Shneiderman (born August 21, 1947) is a computer scientist and professor at the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab in College Park, Maryland. His work is analogous to those of other modern designers such as Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen. Shneiderman discloses his eight golden laws of interface design in his acclaimed book “Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction”:

Consistency — When creating comparable scenarios and sequences of activities, strive for consistency by using recognizable symbols, colors, menu hierarchy, call-to-actions, and user flows. Standardizing how information is communicated guarantees that users may apply knowledge from one click to the next without having to learn different representations for the same tasks. Consistency is vital because it helps consumers grow accustomed with your product’s digital landscape, allowing them to achieve their goals more quickly.

Enable frequent users to use shortcuts — Allow regular users to utilize keyboard shortcuts. As usage grows, so does the desire for faster means of accomplishing tasks. For example, both Windows and Mac feature keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting, allowing users to browse and use the user interface more quickly and easily as they gain expertise.

Offer informative feedback — At all times, the user should be aware of where they are and what is going on. Within a fair length of time, meaningful, human-readable feedback should be provided for each activity. When completing a multi-page questionnaire, a nice example of this would be to signal to the user where they are in the process. A terrible example is when an error message displays an error code rather than a human-readable and relevant message.

Design dialogue to yield closure — Keep your customers guessing. Inform them of the consequences of their actions. When making an online purchase, for example, consumers would welcome a “Thank You” message and a proof of purchase receipt.

Offer simple error handling — Nobody, especially your users, loves being informed they’re incorrect. Systems should be built to be as error-free as possible, but if inevitable mistakes do arise, users should be given straightforward, intuitive step-by-step instructions to remedy the problem as quickly and painlessly as feasible. For example, in an online form, mark the text boxes where users failed to give input.

Support internal locus of control — Allow your users to take the initiative. Give people the impression that they have complete control over what happens in the digital realm. Earn their trust by designing the system to perform as they anticipate.

Reduce short-term memory load — Human attention is limited, and we can only keep around five objects in our short-term memory at any given moment. As a result, interfaces should be kept as basic as feasible, with adequate information hierarchy and a preference for recognition over recall. Recognizing something is usually simpler than recalling anything because recognition requires recognizing signs that allow us to dig into our vast memory and bring relevant knowledge to the top. For example, we typically find multiple choice questions on a test easier than short answer questions since they simply demand us to identify the answer rather than recall it from memory.

Conclusion

If you follow Ben Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design,” you will be able to create amazing, productive, and frustration-free user interfaces like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. From Macs and PCs to mobile devices, virtual reality, and any other future interactive technologies, as long as your designs entail interaction between humans and an interface, these eight golden standards are essential in the design process and should not be overlooked. To begin, utilize the included worksheet to learn how to apply these criteria to your work.