Design Guidelines and Examples

Abstract

Successful designs are comprehensible, predictable, and controllable, thereby increasing the users’ self-efficacy, leading to reliable, safe, and trustworthy systems. These successes require careful design of the fine structure of interaction, which emerges from validated theories, clear principles, and actionable guidelines. In turn, this knowledge becomes easy to apply when it is embedded in programming tools that favor human control. The examples clarify the key ideas of supporting users to express their intent through visual interfaces (although auditory and haptic interfaces are also valuable in many situations and for users with disabilities). These designs give users informative feedback about the machine state, with progress indicators and completion reports, thereby giving users meaningful control.