Usability Central—Best Practices™
GUI Interface Standards Module

Reusable screen design templates and rules for creating user-centered software applications.

The Challenge

Companies are challenged to ensure intuitive interface design across their software applications. Consistent design and architecture help end-users accomplish their tasks, while streamlining development and maintenance.

User interface design standards address this need, yet many companies struggle to create and deploy a successful standard. HFI has found that a typical corporate standards project takes over one year to complete – and often never gets implemented.

HFI's Solution

HFI offers a consensus-building approach to develop and rollout a successful GUI design standard:

• Define the type of standards you need
• Form a committee of your key opinion leaders to drive the process and gain internal buy-in
• Interview business stakeholders
• Conduct end-user data gathering
• Create a customized set of 8-12 reusable design templates to standardize your most frequent screen types (based on templates from Usability Central—Best Practices)
• Iterate and validate standards draft by testing with end-users

Most importantly, HFI completes standards projects just 6-10 weeks and helps you choose a showcase project to put them into action immediately.

Usability Central GUI interface standards module:

HFI's Usability Central—Best Practices contains off-the-shelf screen design templates in the GUI Standards module. These serve as HFI's starting point when creating customized standards for software applications, but can also be purchased standalone (i.e. not customized). These templates capture effective layout, task flow, and visual design – based on extensive research and experience. Module contents include:

• Seventeen reusable page design templates (e.g. homepage, menus, wizards, data entry forms, etc.)
• PowerPoint® and Visio® prototyping tools
• General guidelines for presentation, operation, and interaction