{"id":316,"date":"2010-02-23T16:56:35","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T03:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/?p=316"},"modified":"2010-02-23T16:56:35","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T03:56:35","slug":"microsoft-inductive-user-interface-guidelines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/2010\/02\/23\/microsoft-inductive-user-interface-guidelines\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines"},"content":{"rendered":"

When designing Microsoft Money 2000, Microsoft followed a “new user interface model”, which they called inductive user interface<\/em> (IUI). The Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines<\/a> are available on MSDN<\/abbr><\/a>. I came across them a few months ago and thought they give a nice description of how to make simple, focussed applications screens, whether for a desktop or web application. I’ve summarised the main points here.<\/p>\n

Ensure each page has a clear title.<\/strong> Almost everything else follows from that simple rule.<\/p>\n

Focus each page on a single task.<\/strong> A screen is focused on one purpose if the designer can express that purpose with a concise, meaningful, and natural-sounding screen title.<\/p>\n

Title each screen with a concise and explicit statement of its primary task.<\/strong> This can be a direct instruction (“Select the account you want to balance”) or a question you want the user to answer (“Which account do you want to balance?”). To write a page title, designers imagine a friend asking, “What is this screen for?” and then come up with a clear, helpful response that completes the sentence “This is the screen where you…” The words that complete the sentence become the screen title.<\/p>\n

Optionally include a brief descriptive paragraph at the top of the screen.<\/strong> Even when a title is carefully chosen, the title region may be too small to adequately explain a complex task. To alleviate this problem, you can include a brief descriptive paragraph at the top of the screen’s content area that elaborates on the task.<\/p>\n

If the screen title is clear and simple, designing the screen is usually straightforward.<\/p>\n

Provide a clear exit from the page.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember back when I first saw Microsoft Money 2000, I was struck by how much it looked like a web site — screens looked like web pages, and UI controls looked like web controls. They had simplified the interface so it felt like a website. At the time I thought this was the way of the future: desktop apps would start to look like web apps. Actually I wasn’t exactly right: what’s happened is that desktop apps have been replaced<\/em> by web apps. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When designing Microsoft Money 2000, Microsoft followed a “new user interface model”, which they called inductive user interface (IUI). The Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines are available on MSDN. I came across them a few months ago and thought they give a nice description of how to make simple, focussed applications screens, whether for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-usability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions\/317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}