UI design and Fitts' Law by Jensen Harris (1 Viewer)

[FrankRuperto]

Interesting video about UI design by Jensen Harris, the creator of the infamous MS Office ribbon.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jens...the-windows-activity-6778750286157750272-cUqi

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Thank you for posting that, Frank.

One of the points made near the end of the video is the beginnings of the design concept called "consistent look and feel" - i.e. make all of your forms have common behavior to the greatest degree possible so that once a user learns how to do ONE thing, it becomes easier for the user to apply those principles of use to a different form.

This is why one of the things I preach is that if you are going to have lots of forms , at least consider making a single template form with colors and layout and command buttons (as appropriate) already in place. Have event code ready to run, have safeguard "stubs" in place. Then, copy the template and "fill in the blanks" to customize the individual forms for their individual purposes.

Doing that has been very successful for me. For instance, if I have enough forms and can save maybe 40% of the form layout work for each one because of what was in the template, that can be a massive savings over a couple of dozen total forms.

 

[FrankRuperto]

Thank you for posting that, Frank.

One of the points made near the end of the video is the beginnings of the design concept called "consistent look and feel" - i.e. make all of your forms have common behavior to the greatest degree possible so that once a user learns how to do ONE thing, it becomes easier for the user to apply those principles of use to a different form.

This is why one of the things I preach is that if you are going to have lots of forms , at least consider making a single template form with colors and layout and command buttons (as appropriate) already in place. Have event code ready to run, have safeguard "stubs" in place. Then, copy the template and "fill in the blanks" to customize the individual forms for their individual purposes.

Doing that has been very successful for me. For instance, if I have enough forms and can save maybe 40% of the form layout work for each one because of what was in the template, that can be a massive savings over a couple of dozen total forms.

Agreed, all forms in our apps started out with the standard template you mention. Our apps are as intuitive possible. We streamlined data entry by carefully defining field tab orders, tagging field groups, use of default values, exception handling, etc. so users don't even have to use a mouse during most of their workflow.