Studio 2 | iPod Usability Explorations

Re-write of Schneiderman's '8 Golden Rules of Interface Design'

Strive for consistency

Always make sure that the same actions produce the same (or similar) results. For example, rotating the iPod's wheelpad clockwise will always scroll menus down/right and counterclockwise will always scroll menus up/left.

Enable frequent users to use shortcuts

The iPod allows for the user to customise which items appear on the main menu screen to provide quicker access to common tasks.

Offer informative feedback

This means the system does something in response to the user's action which gives him/her information about what s/he has done. For example, rotating the wheelpad on the iPod results in a volume scale going up and down telling you you have changed the volume. And you can hear it too.

Design dialogs to yield closure

The user should easily be able to tell when a task has been completed. For example, when selecting a menu item with the iPod Video, the screen animates the old menu scrolling off the screen and the new menu shifting in from the right.

Allow 'undo'

The system should allow for any input to be reversed. For example, if you select an unwanted song to play on the iPod, you can simply press the 'menu' button and return to the list of songs again.

Usability Evaluation

The following evaluation method will test three of Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design:

• Offer informative feedback
• Allow 'undo'
• Reduce short-term memory load

The tester would be given an iPod playing a specific song, e.g. Meatloaf - Bat Out of Hell and asked some information about the currently playing song, then given the instruction to switch to a specific other song, e.g. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon.

The first heuristic ('offer informative feedback') should be covered by the first instruction (information about the song playing) and the further two heuristics should be satisfied by the user's ability to navigate to the new song. The "allow 'undo'" heuristic is satisfied by the task directly, since the task emulates that the user has chosen an erroneous song to play.