ui design-day2b

Utility | Meaning | Engagement

UI Design Basics

Engagement

MeaningUtility

Meaning

UI Design Basics

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Meaning for Humans

Meaning for Robots

Humans: How we as humans perceive and make sense of the world around us and how that impacts UI designRobots: How machines acting on behalf of humans interact with our interfaces.

Meaning for Humans

Set the stage 90% of all information going to your brain is visualLight bounces off surfaces Eyes take in the sense data - visual field

Brain interprets makes sense ofgives meaning to the sense dataPart of interpreting involves clustering the sense data into groupsThe way the groups are formed - the principles by which the brain makes sense of these groups are known as the Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

The subject of how we make sense or assign meaning to what we visually perceive was studied by a group of psychologists in the1930’s and 40’s. Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka who founded the Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

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Gestalt Principles

See lights “marching” around the rectangle?

The subject of how we make sense or assign meaning to what we visually perceive was studied by a group of psychologists in the1930’s and 40’s. Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka who founded the Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

“The whole is other than the sum of the parts”-Kurt Koffka

Stephen BradleyWhen human beings see a group of objects, we perceive their entirety before we see the individual objects. We see the whole as more than the sum of the parts, and even when the parts are entirely separate entities, we’ll look to group them as some whole.

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Figure/Ground

“people interpret a stimulus in the context of its background.” A viewer tends to differentiate between the figure and ground (aka. an object and the area that surrounds it.)

square sitting on a circle, or is it a circle with a square-shaped hole in the center?

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Figure/Ground

Blurred background photo: “ground”Text is the “figure”

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Figure/Ground

Admin form section jumps out as the “figure”Header and Menu read as background

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Similarity

things that are similar are perceived to be more related than things that are dissimilar

unlikely that you would see similarity between these shapes

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Similarity

elements that are similar to each other tend to be grouped

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Similarity

we can strengthen the effect by varying the ways in which they are similar

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Similarity

Anomaly

we can take advantage of similarity by introducing elements that are dissimilar to add emphasiscalled anomaly

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Similarity

If I can click on one i can probably click on any of them.

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Similarity

Payment information uniformEmphasis is given to my total balance through the inverse of similarity anomaly.

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Proximity

Items that are close together are perceived to be related

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Proximity

Items that are close together are perceived to be related

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Proximity

Proximity is the only thing associating an item with its detail text

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Continuation

elements arranged on a line or curve are perceived to be more related than elements not on the line or curve.

oriented units or groups tend to be integrated into perceptual wholes if they are aligned with each other

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Continuation

proximity can balance or even override continuation

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Continuation

Continuation is used as a cue to scroll down.Especially when scrolling is so easy on handheld devices.

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Common Fate

“Elements that move in the same direction are perceived as more related than elements that are stationary or that move in different directions.”

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Common Fate

actual motion is not necessary to perceive common fate

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Common Regions

Elements are perceived as part of a group if they are located within the same closed region.

These circles are all the same but we see two distinct groups

most common way to show common region is to with a box

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Common Regions

can also use a background color

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Common Regions

forms/field-set

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Common Region

Controls surrounded by a common regionWorkspace denoted by a common region

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Closure

When looking at a complex arrangement of individual elements, we tend to first look for a single, recognizable pattern.

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Closure

Closure occurs when an object is incomplete or a space is not completely enclosed. If enough of the shape is indicated, people perceive the whole by filling in the missing information

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closure implies a common region that separates “Social links” from “Subscribe” separated from “recent articles”

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ExerciseIdentify the gestalt principles at work

create list

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Figure/GroundClosure in logoContinuation in background

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Figure/GroundSimilarity

ProximityContinuationCommon Fate

Common RegionClosure

Figure/GroundClosure in logoContinuation in background

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Controls surrounded by a common regionWorkspace denoted by a common regionSimilarity in builder menuContinuity in horizontal menus

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Controls surrounded by a common regionWorkspace denoted by a common regionSimilarity in builder menuContinuity in horizontal menus

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Similarity:headings are larger, orangelinks are underlinedProximity

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Similarity:headings are larger, orangelinks are underlinedProximity

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Common region associates tabs aboveDish detailsOptions at the bottom

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Common region associates tabs aboveDish detailsOptions at the bottom

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Similarity - Categories established with offset iconProximity

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Similarity - Categories established with offset iconProximity

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Proximity associates navigation items

Similarity - caps in menuAnomaly - bold on WORKCommon Region - menuContinuity - scrollFigure Ground - image

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Proximity associates navigation items

Similarity - caps in menuAnomaly - bold on WORKCommon Region - menuContinuity - scrollFigure Ground - image

Accessibility

Until now we’ve been talking meaning and visual perception. Let’s not forget though that the web is for everyone, and not all people have sight. In fact there are a number of disabilities we can and should account for when designing our applications, from mild disabilities like color vision deficiency (color blindness) to more severe motor, hearing, and vision disabilities.

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Everyone, in descending order by how much they should know about web accessibility

1. Web/IT accessibility specialists2. Web/IT developers3. Web/IT managers, administrators4. Support staff for content authors5. Content authors6. Everyone else

We aren’t going to go extremely deep into this topic but I do want to share with you what Terrill Thompson - Accessibility Specialist at WU - thinks our responsibility is.

Everyone needs to knowThat users are incredibly diverseA few basic practices that make their online documents more accessible

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Web/IT developers



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Web/IT developers and Improving BAs



Do You Have Color Vision Deficiency?

http://www.color-blindness.com/ishihara-38-plates-cvd-test/

http://www.color-blindness.com/ishihara-38-plates-cvd-test/

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Color Blindness

Color blindness is the inability or decreased ability to distinguish between colors. It affects 7%-8% of all men and less than 1% all women

total color blindness - “monochromia”

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Deuteranopia

deuteranopia (dooter-an-opia) - Green blindness

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Protanopia

Protanopia (pro-tan-opia) - red blindness

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Tritanopia

tritanopia - (try-tan-opia) difficulty distinguishing blue from green or yellow from violetvery rare

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Video: Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind

Of course there are more severe disabilities,blindnessmotor disabilitieshearing disabilitiesthat we should keep in mind when designing our applications.

youtu.be/yx7hdQqf8lE?t=1m15s

http://youtu.be/yx7hdQqf8lE?t=1m15s

Accessibility 101

WCAG: Web Content Accessibility GuidelinesCurrent spec is 2.0 from 2008Defines 3 levelsA - minimum level of conformanceAA - AAA - cadillacWhat I’m going to go over will not get you to A, but it will make getting to A relatively painless.

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Don’t Rely on Color Alone*REQUIRED FIELDS

First Name

Last Name

*Telephone( ) -

this is referred to in broader terms in wcag:

do not rely solely on sensory characteristics of components such as shape, size, visual location, orientation, or sound.

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Don’t Rely on Color Alone

example of how a person with color vision deficiency might see this chat list.

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use both color and shape with icons

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Keep Contrast High

This is difficult for you to read because there is not enough contrast between the foreground and the background.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines specify a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.

WCAG AA Minimum for regular text 4.5:1

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Contrast Ratios

WCAG AA Minimum for larger text 3:1

http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines specify a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.

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Keep Contrast High

Be especially careful with text over images

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Use Headings Appropriately

Headings are not simply used for variations in font. They convey meaning - the hierarchy of the html document - to both viewers and to user agents, such as screen readers…they help create the document outline (more later)

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Headings and Subheadings Many tags in HTML were developed not to assist with formatting, but to provide information on the structural hierarchy of a document. In order to facilitate accessibility and Web standards, it is best to use the tags for the intended purpose in the information hierarchy, rather than for pure formatting purposes. In many cases, doing so will also make your document easier to edit.

Purpose of Headings For documents longer than 3-4 paragraphs, headings and subheadings are important usability and accessibility strategy to help readers both determine the overall outline of the document and to navigate to specific information that may need more of the reader's attention.

How to Use Headings Appropriately

Headings: Semantic vs. Formatted Visual readers are able to identify headers by scanning pages for text of a larger size or a different color/font face. Blind users on a screen reader are not able to see these visual changes, so increasing the font size is not a sufficient cue.

Instead, the headings must be semantically "tagged" so that a screen reader can both identify headings and provide a list as a page or document table of contents (see image below).

Heading provide information on the structural hierarchy of the document.

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Headings and Subheadings Many tags in HTML were developed not to assist with formatting, but to provide information on the structural hierarchy of a document. In order to facilitate accessibility and Web standards, it is best to use the tags for the intended purpose in the information hierarchy, rather than for pure formatting purposes. In many cases, doing so will also make your document easier to edit.

Purpose of Headings For documents longer than 3-4 paragraphs, headings and subheadings are important usability and accessibility strategy to help readers both determine the overall outline of the document and to navigate to specific information that may need more of the reader's attention.

How to Use Headings Appropriately

Headings: Semantic vs. Formatted Visual readers are able to identify headers by scanning pages for text of a larger size or a different color/font face. Blind users on a screen reader are not able to see these visual changes, so increasing the font size is not a sufficient cue.

Instead, the headings must be semantically "tagged" so that a screen reader can both identify headings and provide a list as a page or document table of contents (see image below).

<h1>

<h2>

<h3>

<h3>

H1 for the page title. Only 1 per page.H2 for major headings and H3 for major sub headings.

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Support Keyboard Navigation

Cycling through links when you press the tab key. By default, the natural tabbing order will match the source order in the markup.

If you need to change that, the tabindex attribute is used to define a sequence that users follow when they use the Tab key to navigate through a page.

Make sure keyboard focus is obvious with a focus style in css

To Josh’s question: too much on a homepage would make it tedious to use with a keyboard only.

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Include Alt Text with All Images

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<imgsrc=“images/merc.jpgalt=“MercurialSuperflyFootballCleat”>

Use alt text to convey the same information that the image would.

Not simply describe the picture

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If the image has no information to convey, leave the alt tag blank - the screen reader will skip it.

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<imgsrc=“images/bg.jpgalt=“”>

If the image has no information to convey, leave the alt tag blank - the screen reader will skip it.Otherwise the screen reader will read the url.

To Josh’s question: how do we keep from getting “too much” especially on a home page.If you wind up with lots of images that convey no information, you might have a smell.

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Limit Flashing Elements

< blink >

Avoid flashing anything on the screen more than 3 times in one second.Can induce an epileptic seizure

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Caption Audio/Video

How To Caption Videos on YouTube

Provide alternatives to time based media.Caption videos with either closed or open captioning.

http://youtu.be/qbUcv3Bc61g?t=58s

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Use ARIA Landmark Roles

Aria Role HTML5 element

banner <header role=“banner>

navigation <nav role=“navigation”>

main <main role=“main”>

complimentary <aside role=“complimentary”>

contentinfo <footer role=“contentinfo”>

source: http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2013/02/using-wai-aria-landmarks-2013/

WAI-ARIA: Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suitea technical spec that defines how to increase the accessibility of web pages

banner - use only once per page on the “main” header element which may be a div or the html5 header equivalent.

navigation - use on a section with navigational links

main - the main content of a document

http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2013/02/using-wai-aria-landmarks-2013/

Video: How ARIA Landmark Roles Help Users

Use ARIA Landmark Roles

http://youtu.be/IhWMou12_Vk

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More Information

Level A Compliance Checklist:http://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/

http://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/

Meaning for Robots

What robots?

Web crawlersassistive technology

Semantics

Semantic - of or relating to meaning.On the web, it is used to suggest the meaning of the content enclosed by html tags.

examples: table, ul, dl, h1-h6, p

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Document Outline

When a robot (search engine spider) looks at your webpage, it does not see the decoration or necessarily the layout, it sees the structure of your page and the information you tell it is meaningful, using semantic markup.

The main purpose of semantic HTML is the automated extraction of meaning from content

automated document processing

In it's simplest form automated document processing would be the ranking of websites. The web-crawler grabs the content and tries to analyze it in order to rank the site according to it's over-all quality and relevance regarding you search-term

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Document Outline<h1>

<h2>

<h3>

<h4> <h4>

<h3>

<h3>

<h3>

<h3>

<h3>

<h3>

<h3>

It uses the headings, forms titles, table titles, and any other appropriate landmarks to map out the document and generate a document outline.

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Document Outline

Chrome extension called html5 outliner

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Document Outline<h1>

<h2>

<h3>

<h4>

}looks like a table of contents. This table of contents could then be used by assistive technology to help the user, or be parsed by a search engine to improve search results.

Here you can see how nested headings are used to give this web page a hierarchy.

looks like a table of contents. This table of contents could then be used by assistive technology to help the user, or be parsed by a search engine to improve search results.

Here you can see how nested headings are used to give this web page a hierarchy.

no document outline

dallas pawn shops does not return ca :(

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The H1-H6 elements are labels for sections that follow

The CAPTION element is a label for TABLE

The LABEL element is a label for the form element

The LEGEND element is a label for a set of form elements

The TH element is a label for a row/column of table cells.

The TITLE element is a label for the document.

The title attribute is a label for many elements e.g. INPUT

source: http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10-TECHS/guidelines.html#tech-provide-outline-view

Anything you want in your document outline needs a “label”

http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10-TECHS/guidelines.html#tech-provide-outline-view

http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10-TECHS/guidelines.html#tech-provide-outline-view

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(Some) HTML5 Elements

<section>

<article>

<aside>

<nav>

<header>

<footer>

<main>

<video>

<audio>

HTML5 gives us some new elements to use for better semantics most of or all these used to be represented by the <div> tag.

section - Defines a section in a document.

header - Defines the header of a page or section. It often contains a logo, the title of the Web site, and a navigational table of content.

footer - Defines the footer for a page or section. It often contains a copyright notice, some links to legal information, or addresses to give feedback.

nav - defines a section that contains only navigation links

article - Defines self-contained content that could exist independently of the rest of the content.

aside - Defines some content loosely related to the page content. If it is removed, the remaining content still makes sense.

main - Defines the main or important content in the document. There is only one <main> element in the document.

video - represents a video file and it’s associated audio files and captions

audio - represents a sound or an audio stream

Which Tag to Use?

81source: http://html5doctor.com/downloads/h5d-sectioning-flowchart.pdf

html5doctor has put out a flowchart to help you decide which tags to use for better semantics.

http://html5doctor.com/downloads/h5d-sectioning-flowchart.pdf

The Future of the Webaka the “Semantic” Web

Semantic Web Video

Video: 2007 by Manu Sporny - contributor to W3Cchair of the W3C’s rdfa Working Group

http://youtu.be/OGg8A2zfWKg?t=2m26s

Microformats RDFa

Microdata

Oh My!

Sporny mentioned Microformats and RDFa as attributes we can add to markup to make interfaces more semantic - to tell robots about ‘things’ instead of documents.

Few changes since this video.Rise and apparent fall of micro data - dropped by blink and webkitMIA Microformats ?

RDFa Lite

Does everything important that Microdata does, it’s an official standard, and has the strongest deployment of the two. RDFa Lite became a W3C Recommendation in 2012

Quick example of how to tell a robot about a ‘thing’.

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Specify Vocabulary

Typically when we talk about a thing, we use a particular vocabulary to talk about it. So, if you wanted to talk about People, the vocabulary that you might use would specify terms like name and telephone number. When we want to mark up things on the Web, we need to specify which vocabulary that we are going to be using.

There are many vocabularies, some are domain specific.

In this example we have specified that we are going to be using the vocabulary that can be found at http://schema.org/.

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Schema.org a vocabulary that has been released by Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex to talk about common things on the Web that Search Engines care about – things like People, Places, Reviews, Recipes, and Events.

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Specify Type

Once we have specified the vocabulary, we need to specify the type of the thing that we're talking about. In this particular case we are talking about a Person, so we add an attribute of typeof=“Person”

This on-page markup helps search engines understand the information on webpages and provide richer results.

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Schema.org a vocabulary that has been released by Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex to talk about common things on the Web that Search Engines care about – things like People, Places, Reviews, Recipes, and Events.

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Specify Properties

Now all we need to do is specify which properties of that person we want to point out to the search engine.

Here we mark up the person's name, phone number and web page, highlighted in blue.

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Specify Properties

Now all we need to do is specify which properties of that person we want to point out to the search engine.

Here we mark up the person's name, phone number and web page, highlighted in blue.

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Semantics Make the Web Better

Has anyone worked on a project where microformats, micro data, or rdfa was a requirement?

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Resources

1 Color Vision Deficiency Test http://www.color-blindness.com/ishihara-38-plates-cvd-test/

2 Video: Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind youtu.be/yx7hdQqf8lE?t=1m15s

3 Accessibility Compliance Checklist: http://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/

4 Color Contrast Checker http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

5 How to caption vids in youtube

youtu.be/qbUcv3Bc61g?t=58s

6 Video: How ARIA Landmark Roles Help Users

youtu.be/IhWMou12_Vk

7 ARIA Landmark Roles http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2010/wai-aria-document-landmark-roles/

8 HTML5 Outliner Chrome Extension

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/html5-outliner/afoibpobokebhgfnknfndkgemglggomo?hl=en

9 HTML5 Flowchart html5doctor.com/downloads/h5d-sectioning-flowchart.pdf

10 Future of the Web youtu.be/OGg8A2zfWKg?t=2m25s


html5doctor.com/downloads/h5d-sectioning-flowchart.pdf

youtu.be/OGg8A2zfWKg?t=2m25s

http://youtu.be/yx7hdQqf8lE?t=1m15s

http://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/

http://youtu.be/qbUcv3Bc61g?t=58s

http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2010/wai-aria-document-landmark-roles/


http://html5doctor.com/downloads/h5d-sectioning-flowchart.pdf

http://youtu.be/OGg8A2zfWKg?t=2m25s

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Resources

11 schema.org www.schema.org

12 A primer on RDFa-Lite http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-lite/#bib-RDFA-PRIMER


html5doctor.com/downloads/h5d-sectioning-flowchart.pdf

youtu.be/OGg8A2zfWKg?t=2m25s

http://schema.org

http://www.schema.org

http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-lite/#bib-RDFA-PRIMER

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