HCI
Match between system and the real world
Te Papa
Visibality of system status
pop ups
loading bars
Icons
Visibility of system status
Wow
User control and freedom
Consistency and standards
Error prevention
Recognition rather than recall
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Help and documentation
The visibility of system status what you need for a great user experience. At its core, this heuristic encourages open communication, which is fundamental to all relationships — whether with people or devices. Users who are uninformed about the system’s current status cannot decide what to do next in order to accomplish their goals, nor can they figure out if their actions were effective or if they made a mistake. Don’t blindfold your users!
Upholding the second usability heuristic in writing, visual, and interaction design demonstrates that the site knows its users and cares about them. It shows empathy and acknowledges them as important. In an age where users read less and less but are inundated with more and more online options, prioritizing and applying the second usability heuristic is a dependable way to differentiate while staying relevant, building trust, and instilling feelings of familiarity, which will lead to loyal users.
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
No design standard can ever specify a complete user interface. Thus, by definition, much design work remains, even if the designer is committed to the appropriate standards.
A crucial point in discussing user errors is where to assign the blame for the error. The term “user error” implies that the user is at fault for having done something wrong. Not so. The designer is at fault for making it too easy for the user to commit the error. Therefore, the solution to user errors is not to scold users, to ask them to try harder, or to give them more extensive training. The answer is to redesign the system to be less error prone.
Recognition should mean that the HCI helps show you what you do rather than the user having to recall information
Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.