Designing the User Interface

Part A:

Choose a web-based application in which menu selection and form fill-in are more appropriate than a direct-manipulation strategy. In your initial post, include the following:

• A link to the site
• A description of the intended audience
• An explanation of why menu selection or form fill-in would be preferred over direct manipulation according to the Eight Golden Rules, described in Section 3.3.4 of Designing the User Interface
• A brief analysis explaining whether or not a different type of menu selection or form fill-in is preferred and why

Part B:

Reply to two of my peers post below. In providing feedback to your peers, constructively critique their analyses and address any lingering questions. You may provide additional suggestions as well.

Peer’s Post 1: As we have read, there are pros and cons to each strategy when designing web pages. It all comes down to what’s being achieved, and who the target audience is going to be. A website I visit frequently is https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/ as I really enjoy fishing and will make purchases pretty often. The intended audience for this is avid fisherman or anyone who might be novice fisherman looking to learn some of the basics. It’s pretty clear we would want menu selection on this website for a few reasons. Knowing the 8 golden rules, it must seek universal usability for experienced or novice, keep the experienced user in control as we visit the site frequently, and strive for consistently used terminology because some fisherman know the ins and outs of every bait and if we see something off with the description it could turn us away from ordering. Something as simple as listing a lure a 1/2 oz when it’s really 1 oz can make a difference. Overall, navigation by menu selection proves to be the best here. A user can choose freshwater, saltwater, baits, casting or spinning, specific technique etc. and then from there it will bring you to options specifically based on what you chose. This is extremely helpful instead of having to browse an entire database this isn’t filtered or even fill out information for what you want and risk mis-spelling something and wasting a bunch of time!

Peer’s Post 2: One web application that I regularly use for schooling and personal use is Google Docs, which is a valuable word processing tool for anyone who is constantly on the go or anyone who wants to have access to their documents on the cloud. Google Docs is primarily useful for creating and writing papers, letters, reports, and projects for various people and organizations. Google Docs intended audience would include people in the roles of businesses, students, writers, or long distance collaborators. Looking at the way that Google Docs is designed, form fill-in would most certainly be the most appropriate interface to use for this type of application as a direct manipulation interface would be too slow and inefficient to use consistently. Google Docs current form fill-in interface allows the user to freely type and easily reverse whatever mistakes they may have made when creating a project or paper thus allowing for a smooth writing experience. As mentioned in the eight golden rules of interface design it is important that the user has control of the interface and that tedious inputs are avoided from the user’s standpoint (Diakopou, 2016). If Google Docs were to have a direct manipulation interface a user would likely have to click and drag the words that they want to their paper or have to manually search for a word that they want which would not only be tedious and time consuming, but would also be nonsensical when writing a research report or long paper. Link to Web Application – https://docs.google.com/