This week our assignment is to describe how our MicroCal fulfills the laws of simplicity.
Ten laws of simplicity
- Reduce
- Organize
- Time
- Learn
- Differences
- Context
- Emotion
- Trust
- Failure
- The one
We try to organize our calendar very compact. Users can see everything, but aren’t lost in unnecessary data. We prefer to hide data when they are no more needed (i.e. sliding year part). Also “QuickAdd” or “Jump to date” features are added to reduce input data. For instance, just typing “Meeting with John tomorrow at 7:30” in a pop up screen will add this event to the schedule. Likewise, a time saver feature “Jump to date” helps users to spend less time to reach their specific schedule. We choose pictures of the icons so they can reflect the emotions such as icons for adding a “Birthday” or an “Anniversary”. We aim to provide a recognizable interface to users. Thus, users do not need to spend too much time to learn how it works. Additionally, we add some more features to traditional calendar. For the sake of improving usability, we run the risk of complexity to a certain degree .
All the users can easily control the things that exist in the calender and easily work with it without any problem.
This post was last modified on 18 March 2010 at 15:04.
This post was last modified on 18 March 2010 at 15:04.
4 comments:
Hello.
Interesting discussion I think. You write that: "It may increase the complexity but increase the usability". How is the usability increased when complexity increases?
I would have liked you to discuss some of the other simplicity features you mention in relation to your design.
Friendly
Anette
Hello
Today we publich this weeks assignment on the course website
Friendly
Anette
In our case, we use traditional calender view and many other features. everything they need is on the screen. For instance, user can change year or month information without switching between pages or they can see little notifications on the number of days related to the scheduled events again without switching pages, etc. At first glance screen may look complex. However, user can easily understand and use these features to achieve their goals since we use familiar icons or interfaces. Separation of linked features in order to avoid complexity in our case decrease the usability.
Hello. I think it is a good discussion. I think the idea of jump to date is very well thought in these kind of calendars. It would be a good improvement for our disign.
Something that makes me confused too is the fact that you said "increase the complexity but increase the usability". That's a bit strange, because all the things we have learnt in the course said that complexity and usability were not connected.
Regards,
group 3
Post a Comment