Basic UI requirements

Whenever a new framework is being discussed, or “pimped” as a colleague of mine describes it, all sorts of nergasmic hand waving takes place and a lot of geek saliva are wasted on how easy it is to do things compared to the older frameworks. Unfortunately, almost always, the basic requirements or standards of the actual users of the systems implemented by such frameworks are often lost in the geek moan-fest.

What I’d like to list down here, mostly for my reference, is some very basic requirements of features that are often very useful for end users of web applications, some of it can be adopted for non web based UI as well.

1. Idempotence : Users should be able to accidentally click on a button twice in succession or click on refresh after a button click without it causing a rise in global warming. Related to this, is also clicking on the back and forward button and actually going back and forward instead of getting gestapo signs popping up
2. Linkable or book-markable screens : Users should be able to bookmark screen so that they can return to it easily at a later date. This is especially useful if the screen requires half a day to get to.
3. Consistent theme : This is a bit subtle. One of Ben Shneiderman’s golden rules of interface design is Consistency. If users are using a single application that are made up of a number of systems which they have absolutely no idea of, they should not see a duck-crap green with menus on the side on one page and hello kitty pink with menus on the top the moment they navigate to another screen.

There it is, not a big list, but something to begin with. How these are used as criteria to determine the next shiny geek toy are as follows:

1. Can the new toy support those features out of the box, if not what add-ons/plug-ins or customization needs to be done
2. Once we know the new toy support those features, how easy is it to be used by the *coughcoughcodemonkiescoughcough* developers. Is it a one-liner or is it xml-hell, etc?
3. Now compare that to the old framework

Again not much, but something to start with.