Examples of good UI design:
1. Wikipedia
One great example of good UI is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a collaboratively edited
online encyclopedia. It is used to store information about a variety of subject on the
internet. What makes Wikipedia such a great interface is it’s internal consistency. No
matter what subject you are searching, the layout and structure of the site remains the
same. The sidebar and top navigation bar always contains the same information. This
allows for users to search many different terms without feeling like they are leaving the
application. All links within the articles only link to the Wikipedia site , besides a section
specific for external links, which helps facilitate a consistent user experience. Even when
using the site in different languages, the site looks the same.
2. Gmail
Gmail also has a good interface. It is a web application that allows users to send
and receive emails. Its best feature is one that prevents users from making mistakes.
Whether you are deleting an email, sending an email, marking an email as read, or one of
the many options Gmail provides, you can undo your action. On most modern web
browsers, when you perform an action, it is not easily reversible. If I was to delete an
email, I would have to go into the trash and move the email back into my inbox. Gmail
makes doing that very easy. We all make mistakes, Gmail helps us to fix them.
Examples of bad UI design
1. TV menu
One example of bad UI is menu of TVs. The purpose of the menu is to allow users to
change the settings of the TV. This includes things like the brightness, audio outputs, and
user inputs. It fails in memorability, learnability, and causes many errors. Why this fails
is because the controls are not laid out in a way that correlates to the controls on the
screen. When you try to move up a section, you end up exiting the menu. When you try
selecting an option, you end up turning off the TV. Things like this happen all the time. It
was most likely designed this way because engineers did not feel like adding more
buttons to the design so they used the existing ones such as the volume up and down, and
channel selection, but they are laid out in a linear fashion. A design that could still use the
same buttons, but makes the actions of the buttons more apparent is one that arranges the
volume up down and channel up down like the points of a compass. Then moving up and
down in the menu and within menus would make sense.
2. Stephanie’s on Tremont
A very basic example of bad user interface is the Stephanie’s on Newbury website. It
is a website to provide users information about a restaurant. It has issues with not having
all needed information visible and having an inconsistent menu. Examples of this are the
following. 1. When you click the reservation menu item, it tells you to use the interface at
the bottom of the page rather than directing you to the interface itself. 2. In the “About
the Restaurant” section, where one usually finds information about store hours, there is
no indication of when the restaurant is open. I found that information in the “Directions”
section instead. If the designer put the relevant information in the relevant sections, the
site would be vastly improved. They might even want to take out the reservation section
totally.
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