Tag Archives: user
How a good application interface design promotes a software's success
A nice-looking, functional and straightforward software application interface can easily make the distinction between a product´s failure or success. This sounds more than logical, nevertheless interface layout and testing is often being disregarded by both large and small application producers. If an end-user finds a user interface being not as much as logical, difficult to understand and not comfortable to work with, then a product that may have been outstanding, is bound to failure.
The primary Purpose of Any Graphical user interface
When coming up with a software application graphical user interface, the main factor to consider is its common approval by end-users. In the end, end users would like to carry out their tasks as quickly and simply as possible, as well as the interface is simply a tool to achieve that goal. Therefore, any application developer must ensure that the final software program product includes a visually appealing, flexible and straightforward to utilize interface.
However, many IT companies tend to pay little focus on the rules and methods needed to design an excellent graphical user interface. “The only goal is that the program works!” is apparently their motto. Though this viewpoint, they’re disregarding the countless inconveniences and issues that they’re causing for the end-users of their products. When a visual program obliges an individual to continuously consult the guide manual, it is time to improve the interface design. Likewise, frequent need of assistance to have the ability to work with an interface is a clear indicator of an inflexible application product which drastically decreases efficiency, as users need more hours and attention to execute their tasks.
The Golden Rules of a User-Friendly Application Interface Design
Thankfully, a clumsy interface can easily be improved and avoided through using some simple ground rules ? Five Golden Rules to develop a nice, professional and straightforward application graphical user interface.
Consistency. An excellent graphical user interface need to let users to execute the same series of actions in the same situation, as well as the terminology used all through menus, windows and dialog boxes ought to be steady.
Speed. Frequent users should be able to work with shortcuts, to increase the interaction speed. Key blends, hidden commands, etc. are extremely helpful to skilled people.
Feedback. Each and every action ought to be followed by some kind of system feedback, for example short messages.
Aesthetics. A good looking graphical user interface improves end-user satisfaction because it makes the user experience much more pleasant.
Action reversal. An excellent user interface should not punish its end users for their mistakes. Instead, it ought to offer them the choice to undo their actions, for instance via the typical Undo button. In this way, users will be more relaxed while doing work and tend to discover more of the product´s options.
In addition to these Golden Principles for the design of a flexible and user friendly application interface, it is advisable to keep in mind some other aspects of a professional and flexible user interface. For instance, enabling users to get in data by means of checkboxes as well as dropdown menus, rather than being forced to enter all information manually, greatly makes easier any task. Yet another helpful element is adding dialog boxes that guide the users through the actions needed to carry out a task, and even cautious choice of icons along with other images helps to turn a steep learning curve into a short and delicate slope.
In this regard, more simple aspects such as spelling as well as grammar should be paid attention to. After all, badly-written guidelines prevents or perhaps hinder some tasks or actions, plus they certainly reflect an awful picture of both the application developers as well as the development firm.
To Software Excellence
Simply speaking, any organization that aims to stand out from the competition with professional programs of decent quality, need to pay special attention to the aspects of usability and adaptability of the software application’s graphical user interface, as these are really important and decisive aspects in software excellence.
Synchronize Files and Synchronize Folders with the Open Source Tool FreeFileSync
Now there are a lot of synchronization tools out there both paid and free, each with a different set of features and marketing spiel. What makes FreeFileSync stand out? It’s user-friendliness and performance. Both are buzz words already used so often that they almost lost their meaning. But still they describe best where FreeFileSync shines: Its user interfaces are stripped off from superfluous and needless options. Many similar tools seem to add every bell and whistle in a futile attempt to please each and every user, failing to realize they serve nobody in the end. FreeFileSync carefully selects only options that are relevant for backup and synchronization, while making tons of smart decisions under the hood. Most of these the user does not even notice unless he reads the long list of features that this tool supports.
Performance on the other hand is easily measurable. I have yet to find a tool which is faster than FreeFileSync, but there are a few tools specialized at high-performance file copying which seem equally fast. Using system logging tools like Process Monitor it becomes clear why: There is not a single superfluous file access during synchronization. There’s exactly one read access for each file during comparison and another one when synchronizing a file or folder. For a tool which is primarily I/O bound this is as good as it can get, but can rarely be expected when looking at other synchronization alternatives – no matter if free or commercial.
Besides these obvious features, there are more subtle characteristics that are easily overlooked. The FreeFileSync bug tracker has been empty or almost empty for years. This is not to say there were no bugs, but each of them was solved almost instantly within hours or a few days. This is quite remarkable for an open source software in general, and it does not even charge support fees. The release cycles have been around once per month for the past few years. This speaks for a modern agile software development process. Lastly with now five years of development it can be considered a mature and stable solution.
The first thing that you see when you start up FreeFileSync is a very well-arranged and structured user interface. It does not require much reading of documentation to figure out how to setup a synchronization task. You choose directories for left and right side, then compare them. This will fill the preview panel telling exactly what is going to happen before even touching your precious data. Now you can change the sync direction for individual files or select one of a number of synchronization variants. These are pre-configured rules that describe how you want your files and folders to be synchronized. The “mirror variant” for example will synchronize files and synchronize folders from left to right, making sure the target side is updated to reflect the source. Or you may want to select the “two way” variant where both sides are taken into consideration: Any change on one side is propagated to the other. If you have deleted a file, changed a file’s content or created a new file, this change will be synchronized to the other side, even if changes on both sides have occurred since last synchronization. Thereby the program is smart enough to detect conflicts, i.e. if you accidentally changed the same file on both sides, the program will warn and request a manual resolution. So the tool makes sure you do not lose important data, even if you make stupid mistakes.
FreeFileSync can be downloaded for free. Here is a list of the most important features taken from the project site:
– Detect moved and renamed files and folders
– Copy locked files (Volume Shadow Copy Service)
– Detect conflicts and propagate deletions
– Binary file comparison
– Full support for Symbolic Links
– Automate sync as a batch job
– Process multiple folder pairs
– Comprehensive and detailed error reporting
– Copy NTFS extended attributes (compressed, encrypted, sparse)
– Copy NTFS security permissions
– Support long path names greater than 260 characters
– Fail-safe file copy
– Cross-platform: Windows/Linux
– Expand environment variables like %USERPROFILE%
– Access variable drive letters by volume name (USB sticks)
– Native 64-bit support
– Keep versions of deleted/updated files
– Optimal sync sequence prevents disc space bottlenecks
– Full Unicode support
– Highly optimized performance
– Include/exclude files via filter
– Local and portable installation
– Handle daylight saving time changes on FAT/FAT32
– Use macros %time%, %date%, et al. for recurring backups
– Case sensitive synchronization
– Built-in locking serializes multiple jobs running against the same network share
How a good application interface design promotes a software's success
A nice-looking, functional and straightforward software application interface can easily make the distinction between a product´s failure or success. This sounds more than logical, nevertheless interface layout and testing is often being disregarded by both large and small application producers. If an end-user finds a user interface being not as much as logical, difficult to understand and not comfortable to work with, then a product that may have been outstanding, is bound to failure.
The primary Purpose of Any Graphical user interface
When coming up with a software application graphical user interface, the main factor to consider is its common approval by end-users. In the end, end users would like to carry out their tasks as quickly and simply as possible, as well as the interface is simply a tool to achieve that goal. Therefore, any application developer must ensure that the final software program product includes a visually appealing, flexible and straightforward to utilize interface.
However, many IT companies tend to pay little focus on the rules and methods needed to design an excellent graphical user interface. “The only goal is that the program works!” is apparently their motto. Though this viewpoint, they’re disregarding the countless inconveniences and issues that they’re causing for the end-users of their products. When a visual program obliges an individual to continuously consult the guide manual, it is time to improve the interface design. Likewise, frequent need of assistance to have the ability to work with an interface is a clear indicator of an inflexible application product which drastically decreases efficiency, as users need more hours and attention to execute their tasks.
The Golden Rules of a User-Friendly Application Interface Design
Thankfully, a clumsy interface can easily be improved and avoided through using some simple ground rules ? Five Golden Rules to develop a nice, professional and straightforward application graphical user interface.
Consistency. An excellent graphical user interface need to let users to execute the same series of actions in the same situation, as well as the terminology used all through menus, windows and dialog boxes ought to be steady.
Speed. Frequent users should be able to work with shortcuts, to increase the interaction speed. Key blends, hidden commands, etc. are extremely helpful to skilled people.
Feedback. Each and every action ought to be followed by some kind of system feedback, for example short messages.
Aesthetics. A good looking graphical user interface improves end-user satisfaction because it makes the user experience much more pleasant.
Action reversal. An excellent user interface should not punish its end users for their mistakes. Instead, it ought to offer them the choice to undo their actions, for instance via the typical Undo button. In this way, users will be more relaxed while doing work and tend to discover more of the product´s options.
In addition to these Golden Principles for the design of a flexible and user friendly application interface, it is advisable to keep in mind some other aspects of a professional and flexible user interface. For instance, enabling users to get in data by means of checkboxes as well as dropdown menus, rather than being forced to enter all information manually, greatly makes easier any task. Yet another helpful element is adding dialog boxes that guide the users through the actions needed to carry out a task, and even cautious choice of icons along with other images helps to turn a steep learning curve into a short and delicate slope.
In this regard, more simple aspects such as spelling as well as grammar should be paid attention to. After all, badly-written guidelines prevents or perhaps hinder some tasks or actions, plus they certainly reflect an awful picture of both the application developers as well as the development firm.
To Software Excellence
Simply speaking, any organization that aims to stand out from the competition with professional programs of decent quality, need to pay special attention to the aspects of usability and adaptability of the software application’s graphical user interface, as these are really important and decisive aspects in software excellence.