Design, Development, & Production
GuidelinesGuidelines, developed from known and emerging design principles, serve as a reference when creating any type of system or interface. Guidelines are optimally written and implemented when user-centric and task-centric approaches are utilized. The development and implementation of guidelines are best when designers not only understand their user, but also understand the task their users are performing, and have an intimate knowledge about what affordances are provided by their interface, system, or tool. Although, guidelines are potentially written or researched in the early stages of the design cycle, they are implemented and are most beneficial during the development stage of the design cycle.
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What are Guidelines?
Similar to standards, guidelines are a set of loose rules. Following guidelines is encouraged, but obviously not strictly enforced. They can be used in the development process to guide decisions about placement of elements, structure of system, or to determine a course of action.
Why Develop and Use Guidelines?
Two of the main reasons to use guidelines within the design cycle process is to reduce cognitive effort on part of the people involved in development, and to streamline the development or creation process. You don’t always have to recreate the wheel, there are probably some guidelines out there to help you find your way.
Developer tools have aided developers in making GUI interfaces, but they provide no guidance for usability of created GUIs. The GNOME project provides a list of Human Interface Guidelines (https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/stable/). In theory, for software development, following the suggested guidelines will result in an aesthetically, easy to use application.
The World Health Organization (WHO) publishes guidelines on a number of topics, including Nutrition, Environmental Health, and Patient Safety (http://www.who.int/publications/guidelines/patient_safety/en/). These are used as best practices, and when followed, in theory, will result in a positive impact on health policies or interventions.
Developer tools have aided developers in making GUI interfaces, but they provide no guidance for usability of created GUIs. The GNOME project provides a list of Human Interface Guidelines (https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/stable/). In theory, for software development, following the suggested guidelines will result in an aesthetically, easy to use application.
The World Health Organization (WHO) publishes guidelines on a number of topics, including Nutrition, Environmental Health, and Patient Safety (http://www.who.int/publications/guidelines/patient_safety/en/). These are used as best practices, and when followed, in theory, will result in a positive impact on health policies or interventions.
When to Develop and Use Guidelines?
If guidelines already exist, use them whenever you want to. We suggest you review them early in the design process, perhaps the planning stage, and refer to them all the time while developing, but no one is going to chase you down if you dont. (Thats why they are guidelines, and not regulations.) Although, your interface, tool, or system might be terrible if you don’t have some guidance, especially if there are multiple people working on the project.
In the case that guidelines do not exist, exist in a less than desirable state, or are not relevant to your goals, you can develop your own. We recommend that you develop guidelines as early as possible.
In the case that guidelines do not exist, exist in a less than desirable state, or are not relevant to your goals, you can develop your own. We recommend that you develop guidelines as early as possible.
How to Develop and Use Guidelines?
Hennigan, Hayes, & Reith (1995) propose a framework to be used in developing usability guidelines. The main points are that 1) developers prefer tangible examples to general guidelines, and 2) using case based representations of usability guidelines is beneficial.
References & Resources:
1.Henninger, S., Haynes, K., & Reith, M. W. (1995). A framework for developing experience-based usability guidelines. In Proceedings of the 1st conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, & techniques (pp. 43-53). ACM.
2. Scapin, D., Leulier, C., Vanderdonckt, J., Mariage, C., Bastien, C., Farenc, C., & Bastide, R. (2000). A framework for organizing web usability guidelines. In Proceedings of the Sixth Conference on Human Factors & the Web.
2. Scapin, D., Leulier, C., Vanderdonckt, J., Mariage, C., Bastien, C., Farenc, C., & Bastide, R. (2000). A framework for organizing web usability guidelines. In Proceedings of the Sixth Conference on Human Factors & the Web.