International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction

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Unifying Functional User Interface Design

Principles

Jenny Ruiz , Estefanía Serral & Monique Snoeck

To cite this article: Jenny Ruiz , Estefanía Serral & Monique Snoeck (2020): Unifying Functional
User Interface Design Principles, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, DOI:
10.1080/10447318.2020.1805876

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1805876

Published online: 26 Aug 2020.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1805876

Unifying Functional User Interface Design Principles

Jenny Ruiza, Estefanía Serral b
, and Monique Snoeckb
a
Faculty of Informatics and Mathematics, University of Holguin, Holguin, Cuba; bFaculty of Business and Economics, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

ABSTRACT
Many designers and User Interface (UI) educators discuss principles to be followed when designing the
functional aspects of a UI. However, many UI principles have been proposed, scattered in scientific
papers and teaching books. Some principles are different, and many are somehow similar or overlapping
with others. This makes it very difficult to comprehend where to pay attention to when designing a UI.
In this paper, we perform a systematic literature review to first identify the most relevant authors in the
domain of functional UI design principles. Focusing on the three most cited works of these authors, we
extracted 257 principles. We next analyzed all these principles, unified their variants, and, considering
their scientific influence, finally derived a shorter and core selection of 36 principles. This core selection
provides educators and UI designers with a clear path to teach, evaluate, learn and improve the UI
functional design.

1. Introduction generalization of some design principles that help to design

usable UIs. These “UI design principles” encompass the best
Today’s Information Technology (IT) industry is character­
practices in UI design, agreed upon by most experts in the
ized by a heterogeneity of platforms, devices, modalities, pro­
field. These principles present high level concepts and beliefs
gramming languages, working environments, and users with
that allow guiding the software design (Mandel, 1997), while
different characteristics and skills, among others. This hetero­
having a positive effect on usability (Folmer & Bosch, 2004).
geneity represents a huge challenge that forces us to create
Incorporating UI design principles results in better perfor­
highly complex software applications with a large variety of
mance and increased acceptance from users (Estock et al.,
features.
2018).
Heterogeneity of platforms and user expectations, e.g., in
Many authors have defined design principles, e.g.,
terms of user friendliness, have turned the User Interface (UI)
(Mandel, 1997; Nielsen, 1994c; Norman, 1983b;
of an application into one of the most important elements to
Shneiderman et al., 2009). How the principles are defined is
consider when developing applications since it connects the
however different per author, e.g., principles may be defined
end-users to the functionality of the software (Akiki et al.,
at different levels of abstraction and may or may not contain
2015; Hentati et al., 2016; Martins & Garcia, 2015; Molina
guidelines to implement them. Also, some principles are pro­
et al., 2012; Myers et al., 2000; Shneiderman, 1997; Yigitbas
posed by several authors, while others are proposed by
et al., 2017).
only one.
The importance of the UI as part of an application makes it
In the literature, only a few studies can be found that
extremely important that software developers know how to
analyze UI design principles. Kimball (2013) presents
design a UI. Nevertheless, developers mostly fall short when it
a study focused on visual design principles like balance, con­
comes to aspects of usability engineering as part of the soft­
trast, and alignment. In this study, principles are searched in
ware engineering processes (Polack-Wahl, 2004). As the suc­
books and web-sites on design and designers, design educa­
cess or failure of a software application depends on its
tors and design students are surveyed on how the principles
usability (Molina et al., 2012; Van Schaik & Ling, 2008),
are related to one another. Ahmed (2010) presents
poor knowledge on issues of usability leads to little or no
a comparative study of the design elements and principles
appreciation for UI issues and related constraints on the
proposed by several authors. This author proposes balance,
functional core (Adikari et al., 2009).
rhythm, proportion and emphasis as the basic design princi­
As explained by (Galitz, 2007), a proper interface design
ples, stating all the other principles are only variations of these
should satisfy the users´ needs, capabilities and limitations.
four design principles. Finally, a conceptual framework for
Even when different systems have different kinds of users,
a systematic mapping of layout design principles based on the
there are some inherent and similar characteristics in the way
Yin and Yang theory is proposed in (Park, 2009). These three
the users interact with the applications as humans. The study
studies focus on visual design principles and tackle, amongst
of this human behavior with computers has led to the
others, the esthetic and artistic appeal related to graphic

CONTACT Estefanía Serral [email protected] Faculty of Business and Economics, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
© 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 J. RUIZ ET AL.

design. The graphic design is however like a skin that covers Sections 2.2 and 2.3). Then, due to the fact that many variants
functionalities. Obviously, the functional aspects under this from the same principles exist and that some were duplicated
skin are equally important when it comes to usability. or overlapping each other, a reduction of the principles was
There are other studies for functional design principles that made (see Section 3). In the last step, we analyzed the UI
are very domain or purpose specific and cannot easily be design principles that are most referenced in the literature
generalized. Examples are the works proposed by taking into account all the principles’ variants and articles
(Chorianopoulos, 2008), (for interactive television applica­ where they are published (see Section 4). Section 5 discusses
tions), (Petrovčič et al., 2018), (for elderly users), (Min & the lessons learned-and the limitations of this research.
Lee, 2019), (for infrequent tasks). However, as far as we Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper.
know, there are no studies that compile UI design principles
from a functional perspective with a wider scope. In the
remainder of this paper, we will use the term “functional UI 2. Principles proposed in the literature (steps one
design principles” or “UI design principles” for short. and two)
This lack of clear set of agreed upon functional UI design The goal of the first step is “to collect all principles”. As
principles is problematic. As explained above, it is of utmost identifying principles cannot be done without identifying
importance to train software engineers in UI design. Yet, first the works in which they are presented, we collected the
training in design involves learning about principles principles in two steps: 1) identifying all relevant authors,
(Kimball, 2013), but the wide variety of design principles and 2) identifying all the principles proposed by each author.
can make it very difficult for new designer to understand Each of these steps is explained in detail below, including how
where their focus should be. difficulties in the identification process were dealt with.
While general design principles or heuristics exist for gra­
phic user interfaces, “it remains a challenge to facilitate the
implementation of these traditional interface interaction heur­ 2.1. Identifying relevant authors and their works
istics for design” (Miller et al., 2018). Even though they exist, Identifying all relevant papers or books that present design
design principles or heuristics are not yet used enough and principles is complicated by the fact that there is no unique
are difficult to understand by software developers (Seffah & term to coin design principles. As (Scapin & Bastien, 1997)
Metzker, 2004). Providing them with support for learning UI posit, there are many different ways to capture human factor
design principles can optimize UI design. knowledge associated to UI design. This knowledge may not
The goal of this paper is to address this gap by presenting always be called “design principles” but certainly can be
a compilation of core UI design principles related to func­ identified as good practices. Some examples are “golden
tional aspects. Figure 1 shows the steps of the overall research rules” (Shneiderman, 1997), sets of guidelines (Smith &
method for the collection, analysis and selection of UI design Mosier, 1986) and standards (from organizations like ISO).
principles. For each step, the detailed method is explained in The use of a search term in a database would therefore
the corresponding section: steps 1 and 2 are described in always only yield a subset of the relevant works. In such
Section 2, and steps 3 and 4 are described in Sections 3 and a case, snowballing may be an important step to complete
4 respectively. an initial set of papers. Snowballing can be done by looking at
The first step is a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on UI forward and backward citations. However, many papers
design principles (see Section 2.1). The texts discovered by the would cite a paper that refers to UI design principles, but
SLR include books, UI design courses, scholarly articles and without presenting guidelines itself. Also, each found paper
web sites that focus on UI design, design principles, UI can cite many more papers (and not only one paper) to refer
principles and similar subjects. The outcome of this step is to a principle, its use, or an author. Hence, snowballing
a set of most relevant authors. In the second step, the design through the references would lead to a massive amount of
principles where compiled: we first compiled the set of most papers to go through, many of which would be irrelevant for
relevant works of the most relevant authors in this domain our purpose. For that reason, looking up the other works of
and the UI design principles proposed in these works (see the same authors would be a better approach. For other

Figure 1. Method followed for the analysis and selection of UI design principles.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION 3

problems, we faced during the process of identifying the Based on these criteria, we retained 56 papers and dis­
relevant authors and their works the reader is referred to carded 416 papers.
subsection 5.1. To conclude the first step of the process, from these 56
So, to identify the relevant works we first need to identify papers, the most important authors need to be identified.
the relevant authors in this domain. To that end we per­ Figure 2 shows the process followed for the selection of
formed a SLR, following the guidelines proposed by authors who propose functional UI design principles.
(Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). These guidelines propose to From the selected papers we extracted a list of 41 authors
perform the SLR in three phases: planning, conducting, and who were cited in those 56 papers and who propose func­
reporting. tional UI design principles. The list of authors is presented in
Table 1 with the number of papers from the SLR that cite that
particular author. The authors were cited in several contexts.
2.1.1. Planning the SLR Appendix D shows the complete list of contexts as presented
To answer the research question “Which authors have proposed in the 56 accepted papers.
UI design principles?”, we searched the Scopus database, which is A number of authors were discarded because the principles
one of the largest databases of peer-reviewed literature. User they proposed were very domain or purpose specific and
Interfaces is a term used in software and technologies of any cannot be generalized. Examples are listed in Table 2.
field of knowledge. However, its development is inherent to the Given the long list of authors, and to ensure relevance of
fields of computer science, informatics, and engineering. As our the found principles, we decided to analyze the authors who
goal is to unify UI functional design principles, we decided to have been cited at least by 2 papers from the SLR and discard
focus on these fields and exclude papers in others like mathe­ the rest of the authors. After analyzing the authors we also
matics, medicine, business, etc. We therefore used the following decided to discard Jonathan Grudin: he only presents the
search string: TITLE-ABS-KEY (“user interface” AND (“design consistency design principle, which was previously proposed
principles” OR “golden rules”)) AND (EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, by other authors.
“MATH”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “SOCI”) OR EXCLUDE To further complete the set of authors of UI design prin­
(SUBJAREA, “MEDI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “DECI”) ciples, we also checked descriptions of UI design courses and
OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PHYS”) OR EXCLUDE books by doing a search in the entire web. These sources
(SUBJAREA, “BUSI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ENER”)) yielded four extra authors that were not found in the SLR:
AND (EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “AGRI”) OR EXCLUDE Wilfred Hansen (Hansen, 1971), Brian Gaines, Mildred Shaw
(SUBJAREA, “CENG”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “EART”) (Gaines & Shaw, 1984), and Paul Heckel (Heckel, 1991).
OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PSYC”) OR EXCLUDE The final list of authors used to identify principles is as
(SUBJAREA, “BIOC”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MATE”) follows:
OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “CHEM”)) AND (EXCLUDE
(SUBJAREA, “ENVI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MULT”)
OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “NEUR”) OR EXCLUDE (1) Ben Shneiderman
(SUBJAREA, “Undefined”)). (2) Jakob Nielsen
In order to assess the quality of the query, we checked that (3) Donald Norman
the authors we already knew to be relevant for our search (4) Catherine Plaisant
(such as Jakob Nielsen, Donald Norman and Ben (5) John Gould
Shneiderman), appeared in the results in order to ensure (6) Clayton Lewis
that this search process was able to find these authors. (7) Larry Constantine
(8) Lucy Lockwood
(9) Jeff Johnson
2.1.2. Reporting the SLR (10) Debbie Stone
The query resulted in a collection of 472 papers dating from 1982 (11) Rolf Molich
to 2019. We did not put any restriction on the year of publica­ (12) Theo Mandel
tion. Further inclusion and exclusion criteria were as follows: (13) William Hansen

Figure 2. Process followed for the selection of authors.

4 J. RUIZ ET AL.

Table 1. Authors who propose functional UI design principles. compilation of the principles proposed in those works. After
Author Mentioned by having tried multiple strategies and based on the problems we
Jakob Nielsen 32 experienced (see Section 5.1), the final strategy was as follows:
Ben Shneiderman 29
Donald Norman 18
Catherine Plaisant 13
John Gould 5
(1) We selected the list of the most important authors as
Clayton Lewis 5 sources for principles from the SLR, descriptions of
Rolf Molich 5 courses, books, etc. (see the previous section).
Larry Constantine 3
Lucy Lockwood 3 (2) We used Harzing´s Publish or Perish software as tool
Jonathan Grudin 3 to retrieve and analyze academic citations using
Jeff Johnson 2
Debbie Stone 2 Google Scholar as data source. Publish or Perish is
Theo Mandel 2 a software program that retrieves and analyzes aca­
Wilbert Galitz 1 demic citations. It uses Google Scholar and Microsoft
Deborah Mayhew 1
Brad Mayer 1 Academic Search to obtain the raw citations, then
Kevin Cox 1 analyzes these and presents impact metrics. We look
David Walker. 1
Stephen Schach. 1 for the three most cited works of each author that
Jenny Preece 1 mention the principles (the original or rephrased
Harold Thimbleby 1 principles).
Deborah Hix 1
Rex Hartson 1 (3) Count the citation per author for those three works
George Pangalos 1 (note that if several authors proposed a principle
Christopher Rivlin 1
Davies Cooper 1 together in a joint work the citation of that work is
William Lidwell 1 counted only once when counting citations for the
Kritina Holden 1
Jill Butler 1
principles).
Helen Sharp 1
Yvonne Rogers 1
Alan Dix 1 Figure 3 shows the process followed for the identification of
Janet Finlay 1 the most cited author´s works in which they propose func­
Gregory Abowd 1
Russell Beale 1 tional UI design principles. More details about the second
Eduard Tufte 1 step could be found in the section 5.1 with the specific
Joseph Dumas 1
Janice Redish 1 strategy for finding the principles within the author´s works.
Peter Polson 1 Table 3 presents the resulting list of the most important
Aaron Marcus 1 authors ordered by the number of citations. “Cited by” counts
Dan Olson 1
the citation per author for the three most cited works where
he/she proposed the principles. As not all authors have 3
(14) Paul Heckel works where they propose principles and some of them
(15) Brian Gaines share works, the final list counts only 25 papers. “Average of
(16) Mildred Shaw citations” is “cited by” divided by the numbers of years since
the paper was published.
After a careful review of the 3 most relevant works of the
selected authors where they proposed the principles (see Table
3), we compiled all the principles proposed per author. The
2.2. Identifying the principles per author
exercise of collecting the principles shows that: a) there is no
Once we had the list of authors as sources for UI design single author who provides a complete set of principles and b)
principles, we compiled the principles proposed by each some of the sets proposed by different authors overlap. Table 4
author. To that end, we performed two additional steps: 1) shows the number of principles proposed by each author in
identification of the author’s works where principles are pro­ their most cited works and the total number of principles
posed (note that some works are not immediately obtained (including variations: principles that slightly modifies the
from the SLR because they are, e.g., not digitalized) and 2) main ones) proposed in the three analyzed works per author.

Table 2. Examples of discarded authors for UI design principles with a narrow scope.
Author Paper that mentions the author Scope
Alma Whitten Why Do Street-Smart People Do Stupid Things Online? (Bratus et al., Principles for security specific challenges of matching
Doug Tygar 2008) system design to users’ mental models
Simson Garfikel
Marck Overmars Usability heuristics in the context of control features on mobile games Principles for Iphone games
(Daud et al., 2016)
Robertas Damaševičius Learning Object Reengineering Based On Principles for Usable User Principles for mobile devices and e-learning
Lina Tankelevičienė Interface Design (Damaševičius & Tankelevičienė, 2008)
Ka-Ping Yee. N-Auth: Mobile authentication done right (Peeters et al., 2017) Principles for secure systems
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION 5

Figure 3. Process followed for the selection of author´s works.

Table 3. Most cited authors for UI principles and number of citations based on
the three chosen papers by each author in Harzing’s Publish or Perish. 2.3. Summary of design principles proposed in the
Author Cited by Average of citations literature
Jakob Nielsen 22124 1005.64
Donald Norman 16703 596.54 In the early 70´s (Hansen, 1971) defined a set of design
Ben Shneiderman 13504 710.74 principles for interactive graphics applications. Those princi­
Rolf Molich 3607 133.59 ples were originally intended for clerical work with text edit­
John Gould 2871 92.61
Clayton Lewis 2657 85.71 ing applications, but the author claimed that they could be
Larry Constantine 1443 84.88 applied to administrative work as well. His first principle is
Lucy Lockwood 1253 73.71
Catherine Plaisant 966 54.21 know the user and gives advice regarding which user informa­
Theo Mandel 467 21.23 tion is important to gather, such as the user´s education,
Debbie Stone 442 40.18
Wilfred Hansen 345 7.66
experience, etc. Hansen explains that the user is a human,
Paul Heckel 230 7.19 and therefore the designer should be aware of the user´s
Jeff Johnson 205 12.81 capabilities and limitations. The rest of Hansen’s principles
Brian Gaines 65 2.03
Mildred Shaw 65 2.03 aim to build a system according to those human capabilities
and limitations. For example, the reason behind the principle
minimize memorization when using the system is that humans
have short-term memory limitations. Cockton (2004) cate­
Table 4. Number of principles proposed by the authors in their most cited work
and variations. gorizes Hansen´s principles as “Directives for designers”.
Number of principles in Number of principles Norman (1983a) analyzed common errors made by users
Author the most cited work including variations and derived design principles based on human cognition. He
Jakob Nielsen 10 20 stresses how end-users often make errors and formulated
Donald Norman 6 10 guiding rules for avoiding those errors or at least avoiding
Ben Shneiderman 8 12
Catherine Plaisant1 8 8 negative impact of those errors.
Rolf Molich 9 16 Gaines and Shaw (1984) propose rules for dialogue engi­
John Gould 3 7
Clayton Lewis 3 11 neering aiming at general principles for system design.
Larry Constantine 6 6 However, these rules are quite high-level (for example: We
Lucy Lockwood2 6 6
Theo Mandel 24 27
are responsible for computer behavior) and therefore require
Debbie Stone 8 8 interpretation.
Wilfred Hansen 14 17 Gould and Lewis (1985) present principles of system
Paul Heckel 30 30
Jeff Johnson 30 39 design, i.e., principles to be followed during the design process
Brian Gaines 20 20 of a system. Gould and Lewis tested the principles and showed
Mildred Shaw3 20 20
Total 205 257 that not always are intuitive to designers.
Principles proposed by (Heckel, 1991) are another example
of principles that unify aspects that can also be considered as
advices for designers when driving the process of developing
In total we collected 205 unique principles proposed in the the UI (e.g., avoid frustrating the user and make your design
most cited works, and 257 principles that include variations of simple but not too simple).
principles (e.g., feedback and offer informative feedback are Nielsen and Molich (1990) performed a factor analysis of
variations of the same principle) proposed by the same author 249 usability problems and later (Nielsen, 1994c) proposed
in their two other analyzed works. The resulting long list of a refined set of ten heuristics. This set of heuristics is very well
principles can be found in Appendix A. The next subsection known in the field of UI design.
provides a brief overview of the principles that made it to this Shneiderman (1997) proposed eight principles that were
long list. derived from experience and have been refined over time.
6 J. RUIZ ET AL.

This author called those principles “Golden rules”. The golden number of principles (working from 257 principles resulting
rules, probably the most known principles in UI design, are from the previous step) was made by removing overlaps and
general and require refinement for specific design domains duplications.
but, as (Shneiderman, 1997) explains, the golden rules “have Figure 4 shows the process we follow to unify the princi­
been well received as a useful guide to students and ples according to the different cases. This process shows the
designers”. Those rules have also been expanded with varia­ total number of principles resulting from each step.
tions by authors like (Johnson, 2007; Nielsen, 1995; To remove duplications, repeated and related principles
Shneiderman & Plaisant, 2009). were merged into a single principle. In this process, we iden­
Mandel (1997) proposes “three golden rules of UI design” tified different cases:
and 24 principles that help to address those golden rules. This
author is focused on placing users in control, reducing user´s
(1) Principles that are proposed in joint work: the prin­
memory load and making the interface consistent.
ciples are proposed by several authors in a joint work
Constantine and Lockwood (1999) present principles to
and therefore appear as (pure) duplicates in the list.
design usable system with a user-centered design where the
Examples of principles proposed by more than one
user is allowed to intervene during any stage of the process of
author together in a joint work are: Structure,
obtaining the UI.
Simplicity, Visibility, Feedback, Tolerance and Reuse
Evaluations against design heuristics or principles are pro­
proposed by Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood
posed by (Stone et al., 2005). These authors group the error
in (Constantine & Lockwood, 1999).
prevention and reversal of actions in a set of principles called
(2) Principles that have a similar name: the name of
Tolerance. They also emphasize the need for simplicity in
a principle is a variation of the name of another princi­
the UI.
ple. Examples of principles from different authors with
Besides proposing principles of what should be done in UI
variations in their names are: Consistency (Nielsen,
design, (Johnson, 2007) also provides a deep analysis on what
1994b), Consistency and standards (Nielsen 1994a),
can go wrong in UI design as affirmed by (MacKenzie, 2012).
Consistency of the system (Norman, 1983a), Strive for
Johnson (2007) also takes into account the capabilities and
consistency (Shneiderman, 1997), Be consistent (Nielsen
limitations of the human cognitive system.
& Molich, 1990), Intelligent consistency (Lewis &
Although the previous mentioned principles were pro­
Rieman, 1993), Make the interface consistent (Mandel,
posed many years ago, they continue to be used in the recent
1997), Consistency (Stone et al., 2005) and Consistency,
literature of the last few years. In the last decade renewed UI
consistency, consistency (Johnson, 2007). These nine
design principles have also been proposed. Shneiderman and
principles were merged in the unified principle “Strive
Plaisant (2009) revisited the eight golden rules proposed by
for consistency”.
(Shneiderman, 1997) explaining their relevancy even for cur­
(3) Principles that have a similar definition: the names of
rent types of UIs. Rather than proposing new principles,
principles are not similar, but they do refer to the
authors like (Johnson, 2007; Stone et al., 2005) compile the
same concept. Examples of principles with different
proposed principles and use them again, proving their per­
names but referring to the same concept are: Access to
manent value in the UI design discipline.
system information (Hansen, 1971): “With the access
Many of the analyzed sets of design principles are quite
to the system information, the user does not need to
similar. There are principles that appear again and again, like
remember what he said and is not kept in the dark
consistency and error prevention. According to (Johnson,
about what is going on”; Visibility of system status
2010) the rationale behind those design rules is based on
(Nielsen, 1994c): “The system should always keep
human psychology.
users informed about what is going on, through
appropriate feedback within reasonable time”.
(4) Principles that are subsumed by others:
3. Unifying the set of UI design principles (step
● A specific principle is subsumed by a more general
three)
one: the principle is contained in another principle
In order to answer the question “which are the core UI that is more general and that contains more infor­
functional design principles”, first a reduction of the total mation not implied by the specific one. For

Figure 4. Process followed for the unification of the principles.

 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION 7

instance, Names not numbers (Hansen, 1971), some way (see Appendix C). For each pair of principle and
Reduce short-term memory load (Shneiderman, author there are two possible values:
1997), Promote an object-action syntax (intuitive)
(Mandel, 1997) and User progressive disclosure ● 1 if the principle is proposed by the author, and
(context) (Mandel, 1997), are all special cases of ● 0 if the principle is not proposed by the author.
the more general principle (and thus subsumed by)
Minimize user´s memory load (Nielsen, 1994b). Using the Graph Commons social network analysis online
● A principle that is split in two or more principles: software this binary matrix was represented as a network.
The resulting split principles are then individually Figure 5 shows the obtained network with the reduced set of
checked for subsumption, similar names, etc. For design principles (red dots) and their relationship with their
instance, Provide immediate and reversible actions authors (black dots). This network has been made taking each
and feedback (Mandel, 1997) is split in Provide author who proposed a principle individually into account,
immediate and reversible actions and Provide feed­ even when they worked together with other authors on the
back. Then the first one is subsumed by Actions same set of principles. In this way, it is possible to know for
should be reversible (Norman, 1983a) and each principle each author/s who proposed it, and for each
the second one is subsumed by Offer informative author, all the principles that he/she proposed. In the figure,
feedback (Shneiderman, 1997). So, in this case, the size of the nodes is proportional to the number of con­
neither the global or the split principles need to nections the node has. The network can be accessed online
be kept. through the following link: https://graphcommons.com/
graphs/8f0b2e5e-264c-4ea5-9c00-5daf4a41fffc
As such, the network graph visualizes how principles are
Table 5 shows the number of principles that were finally
shared by the different authors. A measure of node centrality,
obtained and how many of them were removed by each
namely “degree”, was used to assess the importance of indi­
case. Out of the 257 variants of principles only 31 principles
vidual nodes of principles. The degree is one of the most
were unique and therefore not unified by the mentioned
common measures of centrality and measures the number of
cases.
ties that a node has. As explained by (Yan & Ding, 2009), in
In order to minimize as much as possible the unification
general, nodes with higher degree or more connections are
bias, the process was performed by the main author but
more central to the structure and tend to have a greater
continuously reviewed by the other two coauthors. The coau­
capacity to influence others. In this specific work, a high
thors reviewed the lists of principles resulting of each step to
degree is associated to the principles proposed in coauthored
ensure the consistency of the unification process along with
work or different authors who proposed similar principles in
the correct application of the selected strategy with the appli­
many papers, which can be interpreted as a principle consid­
cation of the 4 analyzed cases. Specifically the two final cases
ered important by relevant authors analyzed in this paper.
(subsumtion of principles by a general one and subsumtion of
The size of the nodes in the network represents their degree:
split principles) were double checked. In addition, disagree­
the more authors proposed a principle, the bigger the princi­
ments found after this reviewing process were resolved by
ple node; the more principles an author proposes, the bigger
a discussion with coauthors. The final list of principles was
the author’s node.
reviewed by two senior researchers in UI design.
The number of vertices adjacent to a given vertex in
Further examples of principles reduction can be found in
a symmetric graph is the degree of that vertex. The normal­
Appendix B. After this reduction process the set of unified
ized degree centrality is the degree divided by the maximum
principles comprised 71 principles.
possible degree expressed as a percentage (Freeman, 1979). In
As previously explained, many of the design principles are
this case, the centrality degree amounts to the proportion of
presented in similar ways by more than one author. Using this
authors citing this principle, with a range between 0 and 1.
reduced set of 71 principles we made a matrix associating
Out of the 71 unified principles, 50 are shared by at least 2
each of the principles with all the authors who propose it in
authors.
Table 6 shows the ranking of these 50 principles according
to their centrality degree. This table is provided as
Table 5. Number of principles obtained by each case. a complementary information to the network graph pre­
Principles per viously presented. Both, the network graph and the centrality
case (out of total Principles Principles Remaining
Case left) kept removed Principles
degree of authors, gives a general idea to the reader of how
Principles proposed 68 (out of 257) 34 34 223
different authors have come up with similar design principles.
in joint work
Principles that have 118 (out of 223) 33 85 138
a similar name
Principles that have 48 (out of 138) 17 31 107 4. The most cited UI design principles (step four)
a similar
definition As 71 is still a too large number to manage easily, the set of
Principles subsumed 49 (out of 107) 15 34 73
by a more general principles needs further reduction to obtain a set that can be
one used as “core” set of guiding principles for junior UI
Principles split 2 (out of 73) 0 2 71 designers.
8 J. RUIZ ET AL.

Figure 5. Network graph showing the relationships between design principles (red dots) and their authors (black dots).

We selected the core principles based on the number of principles more in the second category. Finally, we see that
citations per principle (and their variants). Citation count is 63.78% of the principles are cited more than 200 times.
an important factor to measure the influence of academic Since our goal is to select the most important principles, and
publications, where highly citation number indicates the not the biggest number of principles, we decided to have a cutoff
recognition among peers in a field of knowledge (Zhu & at 500. Although, the resulting set of principles only represents
Ban, 2018). According to (Leydesdorff, 2008) “citation counts 50.70% of the total, the remainder of the principles represent
reflect the usefulness of the publication in the construction of a set of more or less equal size, but much less cited, as it can be
new knowledge claims at other places in the network”. A high seen on Figure 6. The citations of the 36 most cited principles
number of citations is an objective measure that has been also represent 98.98% of the total citations of the 71 principles.
wide spread and shows that a given paper has provoked an Table 8 shows the 36 most cited principles, ordered by
impact in the research community. An initial check was citation number (Note that the numbers of the principles
performed to verify if the authors whose works about design match with the numbers of Table 6 for an easier finding).
principles have been more cited are those that have more The first five principles: Offer informative feedback, Strive for
presence in courses about teaching UI design: The number consistency, Prevent errors, Minimize user´s memory load and
of citations was positively connected with the authors who Simple and natural dialog have the highest citation number
appear more often in the literature for UI education: the most and the highest number of authors that proposed the princi­
cited authors are those presented as most relevant authors in ples. However, a high number of authors that propose
the domain of UI design. a principle does not necessarily imply that the work where
To count the citations of each of the 71 unique principles, we the principle was proposed has a high citation number. For
sum the citations of the works where each principle was proposed. example, the principle Provide clearly marked exits was pro­
Figure 6 shows a chart with the design principles and their posed by 3 authors and has a citation number of 23438 as
citation number. A few principles have a much higher citation opposed to Know the user that was proposed by 8 authors and
than the rest, with a maximum of 59109 and a minimum of has a citation number 3661 (although still higher than 1000).
37. The average number of citations is 7060. In general, the principles having a citation number lower than
Table 7 shows how many principles are cited more than 500 have been proposed by only one or two authors.
a certain cutoff number: 19 principles have a very large citation Clearly, this list of principles can be further structured
number (i.e. higher than 10000). Between more than 1000 and along with a number of categories of principles, such as
500 citations, there is not a big difference: there are only 5 navigation, context of use, clarity, etc. There are many authors
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION 9

Table 6. 50 Design principles with the highest centrality degree. suggesting such classifications. As there seems to be no
Centrality agreed-upon classification, the further structuring would
No Design principle degree require, e.g., collecting the opinions of several experts through
1 Offer informative feedback 0.81 e.g., a workshop or Delphi Panel. We consider this to be
2 Strive for consistency 0.56
3 Simple and natural dialog 0.50 beyond the scope of this paper.
4 Know the user 0.50
5 Minimize user´s memory load 0.50
6 Actions should be reversible 0.50
7 Prevent errors 0.50 5. Discussion
8 Give the User Control 0.44
9 Make things visible 0.44
10 Structure the User’s Interface 0.38
5.1. Lessons learned from the compilation of principles
11 Iterative design to remove usability problems 0.31
12 Speak the User’s Language 0.25 While we compiled and analyzed the design principles we
13 Provide shortcuts 0.25 encountered many problems. Some of them are related to
14 Good error messages 0.25 the search engine to identify works, others related to the
15 Empirical measurement 0.25
16 Allow users to change focus (interruptible) 0.25 identification of the principles inside the works.
17 Provide visual cues (inform) 0.25 Examples of pernicious problems related to using a search
18 Use real-world metaphors (transfer) 0.25
19 Understand the tasks 0.25 engine for the identification of the works where principles are
20 Provide clearly marked exits 0.19 proposed, are as follows:
21 Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors 0.19
22 Provide a good conceptual model of the system 0.19
23 Accommodate users with different skill levels (accessible) 0.19 (1) A set of principles could be presented in more than
24 Recognition rather than recall 0.13 one work of the author, so taking the citation of only
25 Flexibility and efficiency of use 0.13
26 Affordance 0.13 one work is not enough. Google Scholar citation
27 Involve users during the design 0.13 counts are not as reliable as Web of Science. When
28 Integrated design 0.13
29 Reuse 0.13 using Google Scholar we could see that is not possible
30 Allow users to customize the interface (preferences) 0.13 to rank the works per citation. This search engine
31 Encourage exploration (predictable) 0.13 ranks sources using not only citation, but also uses
32 Display inertia 0.13
33 Lever the User’s Knowledge 0.13 relevance to rank publications. We could have used
34 Avoid Frustrating the User 0.13 Web of Science or Scopus instead of Google Scholar
35 Respond to the User’s Actions 0.13
36 We are all responsible for computer behavior 0.13 but those citation counts are typically much lower as
37 Computers provide a new medium for communication 0.13 many resources are left out, while, as stated by
38 Computers programs encode expertise 0.13 (Harzing & Alakangas, 2016) the three databases pro­
39 The style of dialog varies with the computer technology 0.13
used vide sufficient stability of coverage to be used.
40 Be aware of the repertoire of techniques for person- 0.13 (2) Sometimes, a principle that was proposed by an author
computer dialog
41 Natural language may be used in a variety of different 0.13 does not appear in this search. Google Scholar seems to
ways return incomplete results. One reason is that some
42 Fluent language may not imply fluent understanding 0.13 works are too old and therefore not digitized, making
43 Programs require presentation 0.13
44 Programs should be self-sufficient 0.13 the text not searchable by an engine. In those cases, the
45 Dialog should be logged and analyzed 0.13 principle can only be found by human reading.
46 Design for a changing and uncertain future 0.13
47 Make the best use of today´s technology today and 0.13 (3) Sometimes an author has published many works, and
tomorrow´s tomorrow the principles are not necessarily presented in the first
48 Cater to universal usability 0.13 10 most cited works.
49 Design dialogs to yield closure 0.13
50 Support internal locus of control 0.13 (4) When there are too many results for a search in
Google Scholar, the engine stops after 1000 results.

Figure 6. Design principles and citation number.

10 J. RUIZ ET AL.

Table 7. Number of principles grouped by citation number. in the body of the work. Figure 7 shows the steps followed to find
Cutoff Quantity % of the total number of principles the principles.
Greater than 10,000 citations 19 26.76
Greater than 1,000 citations 31 43.66 The remaining problems of the strategy we performed
Greater than 500 citations 36 50.70
Greater than 100 citations 45 63.38 were:

(1) Sometimes an author has published many works and

it requires going through many papers to find if he/
Table 8. 36 Design principles with the highest citation and year of the oldest of she presents the principles or not. Since the list is
the highest cited works. reduced with respect to the previous strategy, we
Number of First year it nevertheless managed to go through the full lists.
authors that was
No Principle proposed it Citation proposed
(2) Sometimes it is not possible to check the works of an
1 Offer informative feedback 13 59109 1971
author (when the work only appears as a citation but
2 Strive for consistency 9 41868 1983 not the work itself).
7 Prevent errors 8 39922 1971
5 Minimize user´s memory 8 37352 1971
load We also faced difficulties during the verification of the work
3 Simple and natural dialog 8 28570 1990 of the analyzed authors. Sometimes it required a careful man­
14 Good error messages 4 23783 1971
13 Provide shortcuts 4 23708 1989
ual verification of each individual work for the following
20 Provide clearly marked exits 3 23438 1989 reasons:
12 Speak the user’s language 4 23314 1984
18 Use real-world metaphors 4 19818 1988
(transfer) (1) Since a same principle may be phrased slightly differ­
51 Help and documentation 1 19364 1994 ently in different works, an automated search would
9 Make things visible 7 19146 1988
26 Affordance 2 16691 1984 not be able to find all works where a principle occurs.
6 Actions should be reversible 8 16655 1971 Manually searching each document is a necessity.
22 Provide a good conceptual 3 16592 1988 (2) Sometimes a principle is only a word, (or it contains)
model of the system
49 Design dialogs to yield 2 13504 1984 a word, that is too much used (like feedback) and
closure then so many works appear that is really hard to
48 Cater to universal usability 2 13234 1997
50 Support internal locus of 2 13234 2004
extract the needed information.
control (3) When a principle is only a word it is necessary to
52 Constraints 1 10040 2013 check inside every work if it is proposed there as
8 Give the user control 7 4109 1984
24 Recognition rather than 2 3776 1971 a principle, and if there are many resources is really
recall hard again to do it. Sometimes only a citation appears
4 Know the user 8 3661 1971 and the work itself cannot be downloaded. In those
21 Help users recognize, 3 3372 1990
diagnose and recover from cases it is not possible to check inside the work to
errors verify it is really about the principle.
25 Flexibility and efficiency of 2 3309 1971
use
(4) When not the exact phrase of the principle, but some
15 Empirical measurement 4 3113 1985 or all of its words, are present in a work it is necessary
11 Iterative design to remove 5 2973 1984 to check inside every work if it is proposed there as
usability problems
10 Structure the user’s interface 6 2897 1991 a principle, and if there are many resources is really
19 Understand the tasks 4 2322 1985 hard again to do it. Sometimes a citation only
29 Reuse 2 1443 1999
16 Allow users to change focus 4 1204 1971
appears, so it is not possible to check inside.
23 Accommodate users with 3 1047 1991
different skill levels While a manual search has the potential drawback of
28 Integrated design 2 892 1991
31 Encourage exploration 2 812 1971 (besides being much slower) being less systematic and
30 Allow users to customize 2 672 1997 exhaustive than an automated search, in this case manually
the interface verifying each document was the better option. It allowed to
17 Provide visual cues 4 670 1984
32 Display inertia 2 550 1971 find the different variants of each principle (variations by the
same author or by other authors), and to identify duplicated
principles.
According to the strategy we used (see subsection 2.2) we
analyzed the first three most cited works of each author that
mention the principles (the original or rephrased principles). 5.2. Limitations
This required going through the ranked publication list and
checking in every work if it mentions principles. The rule we The limitations of this study are related to the limitations
applied was as follows: inherent to the search of relevant authors who proposed UI
design functional principles, searching for relevant works of
If an author has many papers and after reading 10 of them the those authors and the identification of unique principles dur­
principles cannot be found: Look for the works of the author ing the investigation of a huge amount and variety of
where the words “principles”, “rules” or “heuristics” are present principles.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION 11

Figure 7. Strategy followed for finding the principles within the author´s works.

Even though the systematic search process we used gives us 6. Conclusion

some guarantee for completeness, we can never be completely
The main contributions of this paper are a compilation of
sure that no other relevant author exist beyond the ones we
design principles and a selection of those that can be consid­
evaluated. In order to mitigate this risk we considered all the
ered as the most relevant ones.
elements that contribute to completeness: the use of two large
Following the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and
databases, a sufficient broad set of keywords, and additional
Charters in 2007, we performed a SLR to first identify the
backward and forward snowballing to search for additional
relevant authors in this domain. A total of 472 papers were
papers. The fact that we identified only 4 extra authors with
retrieved, out of them, 56 papers were selected as relevant
the snowballing on top of the 41 authors already covered by
and examined in detail. From the examined papers, we
the papers found in the SLR is an indication of reasonable
made a study of the 16 most referenced authors. We ana­
completeness of our search.
lyzed the three most cited works of each author and
In addition, we tried several strategies to further identify
extracted all the principles and their variants from these
the relevant works of each of the selected authors and the
works, compiling a total of 257 UI design functional design
different variations of principles proposed by them. As
principles and variants. Some principles were similar by
explained in the previous subsection, each of these strategies
name, by definition, or subsumed by other principles.
had their own limitations.
Making use of unification and citation metrics, a final set
Also the process for the identification of unique UI design
of 36 core principles was identified. These principles are
principles may present some limitations. However, the iden­
considered by the majority of the analyzed authors and
tification of the overlapping and duplication were done by
have a number of citations higher than 500. As important
the main author and reviewed by the two coauthors. Even
examples within this final list, we can find the following UI
though we ensured reliability in the search process as much
design principles: Offer informative feedback, Strive for con­
as possible, we cannot be sure that other researchers would
sistency, Prevent errors, Minimize user´s memory load and
obtain exactly the same results as presented in this paper.
Simple and natural dialog. The compilation of principles
This is caused by the fact that the unification process always
provides educators and UI designers with insights in what
includes human judgment, in which subjective factors can­
should be considered as the most important (or agreed-
not be completely ruled out. In order to minimize these
upon) principles, and provides a clearer path to teach,
effects, each step was double checked and all the disagree­
evaluate, learn and improve the functional design of a UI.
ments found at the end of each step were resolved by
a discussion between the coauthors. The final set of princi­
ples were also assessed and revised by two senior researchers
in UI design. Notes
However, there is still room for a formal evaluation by
1. Catherine Plaisant only proposed design principles in conjunction
design practitioners and professional designers in future with Ben Shneiderman, although Ben Shneiderman also proposed
research. A broader study could be performed in order to principles without being coauthor with Catherine Plaisant.
include graphics or screen layout principles which are impor­ 2. Lucy Lockwood only proposed design principles in conjunction
tant for usability and accessibility. with Larry Constantine, although Larry Constantine also pro­
This study did not assess the empirical validity and posed the same principles in other later work without being
coauthor with Lucy Lockwood.
applicability of the design principles. In fact, not many of 3. Mildred Shaw only proposed design principles in conjunction
the analyzed papers actually provided evidence for the with Brian Gaines.
validation of the principles they proposed. This points us
to the issue of the need for empirical validation of the
principles. Although this issue is outside the scope of this
study, it is evident that they are worthy of further ORCID
investigation. Estefanía Serral http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7579-910X
12 J. RUIZ ET AL.

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https://doi.org/10.1145/1035134.1035136 About the Authors
Shneiderman, B. (1997). Designing the user interface: Strategies for effec­
tive human-computer interaction (Vol. 3, 5th ed.). Addison-Wesley Jenny Ruiz holds a PhD in Business Economics from the KU
Reading, MA. Leuven, Belgium. She is full professor in the Department of
Shneiderman, B., & Plaisant, C. (2009). Designing the user interface: Informatics Engineering of the Faculty of Informatics and
Strategies for effective human-computer interaction (5th ed.). Pearson Mathematics, University of Holguin. Her research interests include
Addison-Wesley. User Interface design, model-driven engineering (MDE) and soft­
Smith, S. L., & Mosier, J. N. (1986). Guidelines for designing user interface ware engineering.
software. Citeseer.
Estefanía Serral is a computer scientist currently working as an assis­
Stone, D., Jarrett, C., Woodroffe, M., & Minocha, S. (2005). User interface
tant professor at KU Leuven (Belgium). She has a highly international
design and evaluation. Morgan Kaufmann.
and interdisciplinary profile. Her research focuses on IoT, MDE and
van Schaik, P., & Ling, J. (2008). Modelling user experience with web sites:
ubiquitous business processes. She has published more than 20 journal
Usability, hedonic value, beauty and goodness. Interacting with
papers and many more refereed conference papers.
Computers, 20(3), 419–432. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2008.03.001
Yan, E., & Ding, Y. (2009). Applying centrality measures to impact Monique Snoeck is full professor at the Research Center of
analysis: A coauthorship network analysis. Journal of the American Management Informatics at KU Leuven and visiting professor at the
Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(10), 2107–2118. UNamur. Her research focuses on conceptual modeling, requirements
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21128 engineering, software architecture, MDE, and e-learning technology.
Yigitbas, E., Stahl, H., Sauer, S., & Engels, G. (2017). Self-adaptive UIs: She has published over 30 journal papers and many more refereed
Integrated model-driven development of UIs and their adaptations. In conference papers.
14 J. RUIZ ET AL.

Appendix A. Authors and principles for UI design

Author Principles
Jakob Nielsen Simple and natural dialog
Speak the User’s Language
Minimize user´s memory load
Consistency
Provide feedback
Provide clearly marked exits
Provide shortcuts
Good error messages
Prevent errors
Help and documentation
Donald Norman Affordance
Signifiers
Constraints
Mapping
Feedback
Provide a good conceptual model of the system
Ben Shneiderman (Also with Catherine Plaisant) Strive for consistency
Cater to universal usability
Offer informative feedback
Design dialogs to yield closure
Prevent errors
Permit easy reversal of actions
Support internal locus of control
Reduce short-term memory load
Rolf Molich Simple and natural dialog
Speak the User’s Language
Minimize user´s memory load
Be consistent
Provide feedback
Provide clearly marked exits
Provide shortcuts
Good error messages
Error prevention
John Gould & Clayton Lewis Early focus on users and tasks
Empirical measurement
Iterative design
Larry Constantine & Lucy Lookwood Structure
Simplicity
Visibility
Feedback
Tolerance
Reuse
Theo Mandel Place users in control
Use modes judiciously (modeless)
Allow users to use either the keyboard or mouse (flexible)
Allow users to change focus (interruptible)
Display descriptive messages and text(Helpful)
Provide immediate and reversible actions, and feedback (forgiving)
Provide meaningful paths and exits (navigable)
Accommodate users with different skill levels (accessible)
Make the user interface transparent (facilitative)
Allow users to customize the interface (preferences)
Allow users to directly manipulate interface objects (interactive)
Reduce user´s memory load
Relieve short-term memory (remember)
Rely on recognition, not recall (recognition)
Provide visual cues (inform)
Provide defaults, undo, and redo (forgiving)
Provide interface shortcuts (frequency)
Promote an object-action syntax (intuitive)
Use real-world metaphors (transfer)
User progressive disclosure (context)
Promote visual clarity (organize)
Make the interface consistent
Sustain the context of user´s task (continuity)
Maintain consistency within and across products (experience)
Keep interaction results the same (expectations)
Provide esthetic appeal and integrity (attitude)
Encourage exploration (predictable)
Debbie Stone Visibility
Affordance
Feedback
Simplicity
Structure
Consistency
Tolerance
Accessibility
(Continued )
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION 15

(Continued).
Author Principles
Wilfred Hansen Know the user
Minimize memorization
Selection not entry
Names not numbers
Predictable behavior
Access to system information
Optimize operations
Rapid execution of common operations
Display inertia
Muscle memory
Reorganize command parameters
Engineer for errors
Good error messages
Engineer out the common errors
Reversible actions
Redundancy
Data structure integrity
Paul Heckel Know Your Subject
Know Your Audience
Maintain the User’s Interest
Communicate Visually
Lever the User’s Knowledge
Speak the User’s Language
Communicate with Metaphors
Focus the User’s Attention
Anticipate Problems in the User’s Perception
If You Can’t Communicate It, Don’t Do It
Reduce the User’s Defensiveness
Give the User Control
Support the Problem-Solving Process
Avoid Frustrating the User
Help the User Cope
Respond to the User’s Actions
Don’t Let the User Focus on Mechanics
Help the User to Crystallize his Thoughts
Involve the User
Communicate in Specifics, Not Generalities
Orient the User in the World
Structure the User’s Interface
Make Your Product Reliable
Serve Both the Novice and the Experienced User
Develop and Maintain User Rapport
Consider the First Impression
Build a Model in the User’s Mind
Make Your Design Simple
But Not Too Simple
You Need Vision
Jeff Johnson Focus on the user and their task, not on the technology
Understand the user
Understand the tasks
Consider the context in which the software will function
Consider function first, presentation later
Develop a conceptual model
Conform to the user´s view of the task
Strive for naturalness
User user´s vocabulary, not your own
Keep program internals inside the program
Find the correct point on the power/complexity tradeoff
Design for the common case
Make common results easy to achieve
Two types of “common”: how many users versus how often
Design for core cases, don´t sweat “edge” cases
Don´t complicate the user´s task
Don´t give users extra problems
Don´t make users reason by elimination
Facilitate learning
Think outside-in, not inside-out
Consistency, consistency, consistency
Provide a low-risk environment
Deliver information, not just data
Design displays carefully, get professional help
The screen belongs to the user
Preserve display inertia
(Continued )
16 J. RUIZ ET AL.

(Continued).
Author Principles
Design for responsiveness
Acknowledge user actions instantly
Let users know when software is busy and when it isn´t
Free users to do other things while waiting
Animate movement smoothly and clearly
Allow users to abort lengthy operations they don´t want
Allow users to estimate how much time operations will take
Try to let users set their own work space
Try it out on users, then fix it!
Test results can surprise even experienced designers
Schedule time to correct problems found by tests
Testing has two goals: informational and social
There are test for every time and purpose
Brian Gaines & Mildred Shaw We are all responsible for computer behavior
Computers provide a new medium for communication
Computers programs encode expertise
The user should be shown the choices available
The system should adapts to the user under user control
The system should minimize the user´s workload by anticipating responses
The system should cooperate with the user in validating responses
It should be easy to escape from a dialog cleanly
The style of dialog varies with the computer technology used
Be aware of the repertoire of techniques for person-computer dialog
Natural language may be used in a variety of different ways
Fluent language may not imply fluent understanding
Programs require presentation
Know the market
User should be informed
Programs should be self-sufficient
Design never ceases
Dialog should be logged and analyzed
Design for a changing and uncertain future
Make the best use of today´s technology today and tomorrow´s tomorrow

Appendix B. Examples of principles reduction

Principles proposed in joint work:

Principle Proposed by
Structure Constantine & Lockwood
Simplicity
Visibility
Feedback
Tolerance
Reuse
Strive for consistency Plaisant & Shneiderman
Cater to universal usability
Offer informative feedback
Design dialogs to yield closure
Prevent errors
Permit easy reversal of actions
Support internal locus of control
Reduce short-term memory load
We are all responsible for computer behavior Shaw & Gaines
Computers provide a new medium for communication
Computers programs encode expertise
The user should be shown the choices available
The system should adapts to the user under user control
The system should minimize the user´s workload by anticipating responses
The system should cooperate with the user in validating responses
It should be easy to escape from a dialog cleanly
The style of dialog varies with the computer technology used
Be aware of the repertoire of techniques for person-computer dialog
Natural language may be used in a variety of different ways
Fluent language may not imply fluent understanding
Programs require presentation
Know the market
User should be informed
Programs should be self-sufficient
Design never ceases
Dialog should be logged and analyzed
Design for a changing and uncertain future
Make the best use of today´s technology today and tomorrow´s tomorrow
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION 17

Examples of principles that have a similar name:

Principle Variations Proposed by

Offer informative feedback Provide feedback Nielsen & Molich & Mandel
Feedback Norman & Lockwood, Constantine & Stone
Offer informative feedback Shneiderman & Plaisant
Strive for consistency Consistency Nielsen & Stone
Consistency and standards Nielsen
Consistency of the system Norman
Strive for consistency Shneiderman & Plaisant
Be consistent Molich
Intelligent consistency Lewis
Make the interface consistent Mandel
Maintain consistency within and across products Mandel
Consistency, consistency, consistency Johnson
Minimize user´s memory load Minimize user´s memory load Nielsen & Molich
Reduce user´s memory load Mandel
Minimize memorization (general) Hansen
The system should minimize the user´s workload by anticipating responses Gaines
Prevent errors Prevent errors Nielsen & Molich, Shneiderman & Plaisant
Error prevention Nielsen & Molich
Engineer for errors Hansen
Engineer out of the common errors Hansen
Simple and natural dialog Simple and natural dialog Nielsen & Molich
Speak the user´s language Speak the user´s language Nielsen & Molich & Heckel
Use user´s vocabulary, not your own Johnson
Actions should be reversible Actions should be reversible Norman
Permit easy reversal of actions Shneiderman
Reversible actions Hansen
Provide shortcuts Provide shortcuts Nielsen,& Molich
Provide shortcuts for skilled users Shneiderman
Provide interface shortcuts (frequency) Mandel
Good error messages Good error messages Nielsen & Molich & Hansen
Precise and constructive error messages Nielsen
Provide good error messages Molich
Display descriptive messages and text (Helpful) Mandel

Examples of principles that have a similar definition:

Principle Variations Proposed by

Provide feedback Provide feedback Nielsen & Molich & Mandel
User should be informed Gaines
Prevent errors Prevent errors Nielsen & Molich, Shneiderman &
Plaisant
The system should cooperate with the user in validating Gaines
responses
Make Your Product Reliable Heckel
Provide a low-risk environment Johnson
Visibility of system status Visibility of system status Nielsen
Access to system information Hansen
Let users know when software is busy and when it isn´t Johnson
Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors Nielsen
errors Help the User Cope Heckel
Actions should be reversible Actions should be reversible Norman
Tolerance Constantine & Lockwood & Stone
Provide defaults, undo, and redo (forgiving) Mandel
Empirical measurement Empirical measurement Molich & Gould & Lewis
Try it out on users, then fix it! Johnson
Early and continual user testing Gould & Lewis
Allow users to change focus (interruptible) Allow users to change focus (interruptible) Mandel
Free users to do other things while waiting Johnson
Use modes judiciously (modeless) Mandel
It should be easy to escape from a dialog cleanly Gaines
Allow users to customize the interface (preferences) Allow users to customize the interface (preferences) Mandel
Try to let users set their own work space Johnson
Provide visual cues (inform) Provide visual cues (inform) Mandel
Orient the User in the World Heckel
The user should be shown the choices available Gaines
Use real-world metaphors (transfer) Use real-world metaphors (transfer) Mandel
Mapping Norman
Match between system and the real world Nielsen
18 J. RUIZ ET AL.

Examples of principles subsumed by a more general one:

General principle Subsumed variations Proposed by

Prevent errors Prevent errors Nielsen & Molich, Shneiderman & Plaisant
Data structure integrity Hansen
Redundancy Hansen
User control and freedom User control and freedom Nielsen
Allow users to directly manipulate interface objects (interactive) Mandel
Flexibility and efficiency of use Flexibility and efficiency of use Nielsen
Optimize operations Hansen
Rapid execution of common operations Hansen
Muscle memory Hansen
Reorganize command parameters Hansen
Empirical measurement Empirical measurement Molich & Gould & Lewis
Test results can surprise even experienced designers Johnson
Schedule time to correct problems found by tests Johnson
Testing has two goals: informational and social Johnson
There are test for every time and purpose Johnson
Early focus on users and tasks Early focus on users and tasks Gould & Lewis
Consider the context in which the software will function Johnson
Maintain the User’s Interest Maintain the User’s Interest Heckel
Focus the User’s Attention Heckel
Lever the User’s Knowledge Lever the User’s Knowledge Heckel
Think outside-in, not inside-out Johnson
Avoid Frustrating the User Avoid Frustrating the User Heckel
Don´t complicate the user´s task Johnson
Don´t make users reason by elimination Johnson
Design for the common case Design for the common case Johnson
Make common results easy to achieve Johnson
Two types of “common”: how many users versus how often Johnson
Design for core cases, don´t sweat “edge” cases Johnson

Principles subsumed by more than one principle:

Principle Subsumed by Proposed by

Provide immediate and reversible actions, and feedback (forgiving) (Mandel) Provide feedback Nielsen & Molich & Mandel
Actions should be reversible Norman
Early focus on users and tasks (Gould, Lewis) Know the user Molich & Hansen
Understand the tasks Johnson
Appendix C. Principles for UI design and the authors who use them

Jakob Donald Ben Rolf John Clayton Larry Lucy Catherine Theo William Debbie Paul Jeff Brian Mildred
Nielsen Norman Shneiderman Molich Gould Lewis Constantine Lockwood Plaisant Mandel Hansen Stone Heckel Johnson Gaines Shaw
Offer informative feedback 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Strive for consistency 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Simple and natural dialog 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Know the user 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Minimize user´s memory load 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Actions should be reversible 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Prevent errors 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Give the user control 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Make things visible 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Structure the user’s interface 1 1 1 1 1 1
Iterative design to remove usability problems 1 1 1 1 1
Speak the user’s Language 1 1 1 1
Provide shortcuts 1 1 1 1
Good error messages 1 1 1 1
Empirical measurement 1 1 1 1
Allow users to change focus (interruptible) 1 1 1 1
Provide visual cues (inform) 1 1 1 1
Use real-world metaphors (transfer) 1 1 1 1
Understand the tasks 1 1 1 1
Provide clearly marked exits 1 1 1
Help users recognize, diagnose and recover 1 1 1
from errors
Provide a good conceptual model of the 1 1 1
system
Accommodate users with different skill levels 1 1 1
(accessible)
Recognition rather than recall 1 1
Flexibility and efficiency of use 1 1
Affordance 1 1
Involve users during the design 1 1
Integrated design 1 1
Reuse 1 1
Allow users to customize the interface 1 1
(preferences)
Encourage exploration (predictable) 1 1
Display inertia 1 1
Lever the user’s knowledge 1 1
Avoid Frustrating the User 1 1
Respond to the user’s actions 1 1
We are all responsible for computer behavior 1 1
Computers provide a new medium for 1 1
communication
Computers programs encode expertise 1 1
The style of dialog varies with the computer 1 1
technology used
Be aware of the repertoire of techniques for 1 1
person-computer dialog
Natural language may be used in a variety of 1 1
different ways
Fluent language may not imply fluent 1 1
understanding
Programs require presentation 1 1
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION

Programs should be self-sufficient 1 1

Dialog should be logged and analyzed 1 1
Design for a changing and uncertain future 1 1
(Continued )
19
 20
J. RUIZ ET AL.

(Continued).
Jakob Donald Ben Rolf John Clayton Larry Lucy Catherine Theo William Debbie Paul Jeff Brian Mildred
Nielsen Norman Shneiderman Molich Gould Lewis Constantine Lockwood Plaisant Mandel Hansen Stone Heckel Johnson Gaines Shaw
Make the best use of today´s technology 1 1
today and tomorrow´s tomorrow
Cater to universal usability 1 1
Design dialogs to yield closure 1 1
Support internal locus of control 1 1
Help and documentation 1
Constraints 1
Coordinate the total user interface 1
Color as a supplement 1
Maintain the user’s interest 1
Anticipate problems in the user’s perception 1
If you can’t communicate it, don’t do it 1
Reduce the user’s defensiveness 1
Support the problem-solving process 1
Don’t let the user focus on mechanics 1
Help the user to crystallize his thoughts 1
Communicate in specifics, not generalities 1
Develop and maintain user rapport 1
Consider the first impression 1
But not too simple 1
You need vision 1
Consider function first, presentation later 1
Conform to the user´s view of the task 1
Design for the common case 1
Deliver information, not just data 1
Design for responsiveness 1
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION 21

Appendix D. Context in which principles were cited

Context Amount of papers

Design in general 12
Mobile application 10
Usability evaluation 8
Education 4
Security application 3
Application for impaired users 2
Access system 2
Games 2
Television system 2
Managing display layouts 2
E-commerce system 2
Medical application 2
Bioinformatics 1
Control rooms system 1
Workflow system 1
Museum system 1
Internet booking service 1
Ambient computer system 1
Operating system 1
System for children 1
System for carpoolers in the workplace 1
Photo library system 1
Web application 1
Computer agents 1
Bearing design support system 1
Panel-oriented interface 1
Adaptive user interfaces 1
Augmented reality 1
Managing location privacy 1
Hand speech system 1