# Course: Visual Elements of User Interface Design California Institute of the Arts [Visual Elements of User Interface Design - Course and Specialization Overview - Week 1 | Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/learn/visual-elements-user-interface-design/home/week/1) [[On UI and UX]] ---- Week 1 # Interface Conventions: Review There are plenty of “best practice” lists for good user interfaces; mine is not definitive but a good starting point for a beginner. **Real world knowledge** is based on analog models. For example, we understand the functionality of digital buttons on a screen because we’ve experienced analog buttons in the real world—on calculators, remote controls, elevators, and so on. **Learned behavior** If real world knowledge is based on analog models, then perhaps you can say learned behavior is based on digital models. For instance, swiping left or right is a digital convention that is now fairly common among plenty of apps, but has no corollary in the real world. It is an action users have picked up from using smartphones and the apps on them. **Cause and effect** is about action and reaction. When a user presses a button and something happens, they quickly understand the functionality of the button. For example, pressing “Send” to send an email message, or “Submit” to submit a form. **Consistency** is about applying a systematic logic to the way interfaces look and function so they remain familiar to a user. For example, on a telephone keypad, where all of the numbered buttons look the same, you can anticipate that pressing the number “8” will have more or less the same function as pressing the number “1”. **Seamlessness** is about ensuring that the action and reaction are closely linked. The interaction should be easy (with as few steps as possible), and results should be immediate. **Immediate intuition** We’ve been conditioned that in order to interact with an interface we need to touch it in some way. While the system may not be immediately obvious, the solution is usually quickly discovered. **Fulfillment** is the payoff for the user! An interface should function as it was intended, but there are other ways to reaffirm it as a positive experience. Anyone who uses Mailchimp to send email to a list of customers is likely familiar with the [“Freddie High Five” that appears after you send a campaign.](https://mailchimp.com/resources/designing-the-freddie-high-five-animation-for-facebook-ads/) **Undo/redo** gives the user peace of mind that their actions are reversible. A good UI will allow a user to change their mind after they’ve made an action, or at least notify the user before they take a crucial step. You can see a few examples of this in Google’s webmail service, Gmail, from notifying you if you’ve possibly forgotten to attach a document to an outgoing email, to giving you a short window of time to “undo” a sent message before it leaves your outbox. To review a few other perspectives on UI principles and best practices, I recommend the following: [The 4 Golden Rules of UI Design](https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/ui-design/4-golden-rules-ui-design/), by Nick Babich, Adobe Blog, October 7, 2019. [10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/ "https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/"), by Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group website, updated January 30, 2024. [Principle of Consistency and Standards in User Interface Design](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/principle-of-consistency-and-standards-in-user-interface-design "https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/principle-of-consistency-and-standards-in-user-interface-design"), by Euphemia Wong, Interaction Design Foundation, January 2, 2021.