Evaluation of Guidelines for Designing User Interface Software

Abstract

Sixteen systems analysts and programmers were asked to rate and rank computer system interface guideline topics derived from Smith and Aucella's, 1983, “Design Guidelines for User-System Interface Software”. The participants generally agreed that guidelines on these topics are desirable. However, both ratings and ranking data showed that the participants did differentiate among the topics. The topic “user guidance” which included guidelines on informative messages and ‘help’ systems was the most consistently highly rated/ranked topic. In addition, the perceived need for guidelines on sequence control, data display, and data entry was high.