Nielsen and Molish’s 10 UI Guidelines in Bullet Points

Visibility of System Status

• Provide informative feedback for all actions.
  • Clear language.
  • No tech-speak (proportional to the problem).
  • No ambiguity.
• Keep the user informed about what is going on.
• Indicate progress in task performance.

Match Between System and The Real World

• Mirror the language and concepts user would find in the real world based on who their target users are.
• Contain familiar terms and natural language.
• Mataphor from the real world.
• Use user’s background knowledge.
  • Apply rules learned by users in the real world.
    • Meet expectations.
• Follow real-world conventions.

User Control and Freedom

• Undo and redo should be supported
  • Backspace to return is a pattern
• Forgiveness: make actions reversible.
• Ability to cancel or re-order tasks.
• Allow the user to initiate and control tasks.

Consistency and Standards

• Same things look the same.
  • Reduce the number of representations.
• Conform to plataform interface conventions or popular conventions.
  • Reduce learning.
  • Reduce investigations of the digital space
  • Eliminate confusions.
  • Users apply rules learned in others products.
    • Meeting expectations.
• Show similar info at the same place on each screen.
• Icon that represents one category or concept should not represent a different concept too.
• Apply UI element as they are originally.

Error Prevention

• Potential erros are kept to a minimum
• Prevent erros from occuring in the first place
• Understand the user’s language
• Indentity cues between actions and user’s goal.
• Diferenciate primary to secondary actions (e.g. by size)
• Lock buttons that should not be used.
• Give suggestions to the users (e.g. autocomplete inputs)

Recognition Rather than Recall

• Minimize the cognitive load
• We are only caple of maintaining around five items in our short-term memory at one time.
• Recognition involves perceiving cues that help us reach into out vast memory.
  • reduce the use of the short-term memory.
• See-and-point instead  of remember-and-type.
• Make the repertair of available actions salient
• Provide a loist of coices and piciking from lists.
• Visible objects, visible results.

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

• Less interaction that allow faster navigation.
• Provide a great way to work for novices and shortcuts for advanced users.
  • Satisfy users at all levels of expertise.
  • Use shortcuts: Accelerator to speed up dialogue.
• UI should be customizable by the users to suit their needs.
• Physical interactions with system feels natural.

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

• The display must be reduced to only the necessary components for the current task.
• Clearly visible.
• Users can drilldown into more specific contents from a small number of options.
• Keep screen clutter to a minimum.
• Only give your user what they really need at that point.
• More needed than ever
• Try not to add more fuel to the fire than absolute necessary.
• Try not to drown the users in information.
  • Information overload or infobesity ir infoxication

Help User Recognize, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

• Complementation to the user needs of be informed of system status.
• Assume the users are unable to understand technical terminology.

Help and Documentation

• Depending on the type of solution, documentation may be necessary.
• Use bullet points
• Step-by-step instructions
• Organize in categories
• In small pockets, to limit the amount of info presented in one go.

Reference

Interaction Design Foundation