Software Design Guidelines

In the numbered sections of this report, guidelines are organized within six functional areas of user system interaction:

Each section of guidelines covers a different functional area of user-system interaction, although there is necessarily some overlap in topical coverage from one section to another. Within each section, guidelines are grouped by specific functions. Each function has its own numeric designator, as listed in the table of contents for this report.

In adopting this functional organization, we have established a broad conceptual structure for dealing with the range of topics that must be considered in user interface design. Such a conceptual structure is urgently needed to help clarify discourse in this field.

Each section of the guidelines begins with an introductory discussion of design issues relating to the general functional area. That discussion provides some perspective for the guidelines that follow. The discussion concludes with brief definitions of the various user interface functions covered in that section of the guidelines, along with an internal table of contents for that section, which may help to lead a reader directly to functions of immediate interest. Function definitions are repeated in boxed format to begin the listing of guidelines under each function.  Those definitions should aid reader understanding of the material, and the boxed format will provide a notable visual indicator that a new series of guidelines has begun. The guidelines themselves are numbered sequentially under each function, in order to permit convenient referencing. Under any function there will usually be guidelines pertaining to various subordinate topics. Each guideline has been given a short title to indicate its particular subject matter. Sometimes one guideline may introduce a new topic and then be followed by several closely related guidelines. Each of those related guidelines has been marked with an plus sign next to its title. Following its number and title, each guideline is stated as a single sentence. Guidelines are worded as simply as possible, usually in general terms to permit broad application, but sometimes with contingent phrasing intended to define a more limited scope of application.

Role of Guidelines in System Development

If guidelines are applied in the way described here, there are some significant implications for the role of guidelines in system development. Generally stated guidelines should be offered to designers as a potential resource, rather than imposed as a contractual design standard (Smith, 1986). It is only specifically worded design rules that can be enforced, not guidelines.

Design rules can be derived from the guidelines material, but that conversion from guidelines to rules should be performed as an integral part of the design process, serving to focus attention on critical design issues and to establish specific design requirements. Once agreed design rules are established, those rules can be maintained and enforced by the managers of system development projects. Specific design rules probably cannot be imposed effectively at the outset of system development by some external agency -- by a sponsoring organization or by a marketing group. It is the process of establishing design rules that should be imposed, rather than the rules themselves. A software design contractor might reasonably be required to establish rules for the design of user interface software, subject to review by the contracting agency. Available guidelines could be cited as a potentially useful reference for that purpose.

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