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February 2001 Genie Application Style Guide 7
Usability Design Philosophies
Testing the Design
2
■ Personalise the service according to the user.
Allow an application to retain user information to autofill personal fields. For
example, store the login and/or password, billing address, or other information in a
cookie or on a server where the application resides. The user can be determined by the
subscriber ID.
■ Anticipate situations in which users are likely to make errors.
Make sure the application does not allow the user to continue a task unless certain
requirements have been met. For example, if the user is entering the date, the
application should check that the date is 8 digits: 2 digits for the day, 2 digits for the
month, and 4 digits for the year.
Testing the Design
Once the application is designed, use display templates and navigation flow diagrams to
show how the application will behave on each type of browser. Use templates to view the
layouts until you are satisfied with the text, wrapping, and overall look and feel. For this
guide, templates restricting the lengths of the text were used to demonstrate menus,
multiple selection lists, non-wrapping text (Times Square text scrolling), the viewing of
text and links, and entries. Examine every layout and display for consistency. Unnecessary
differences (for instance the use of scrolling text in one screen and wrapping text in
another) can confuse the user.
The sample application diagrams in Appendix B are meant to demonstrate navigation
only, not other behavior. In contrast, the templates used throughout the rest of the guide
indicate other desired application behaviors (wrapping texts, softkey labels, and so on).
Browser Templates
Openwave Browser Template
The Openwave Browser typically has two programmable softkeys at the bottom; in this
example, OK and Done. For these examples, the
<do type="accept"> label appears on
the right softkey and the
<do type="options"> label on the left softkey. Text that
scrolls horizontally across the screen (Times Square scrolling) appears to the right of the
screen, in grey. Below the screen, the template shows additional menu items and text; the
user must scroll down to these. Each phone has a fixed key for Back or Back/Clear
navigation, not shown.
1 Quotes
2 News
3 Top 10 most
active stocks
4 My
portfolios
Done OK
5 Recent
activity