The Need to Design for Accessibility/Usability

Web accessibility –  “people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web”. W3C provide guidelines through Web Accessibility Initiative (WIA). Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) – UK law – accessibility issues. Organisation can be subject to serious legal liabilities for Continue Reading

Principles of User Interface Design

PARC principles – four basic principles do UI design: Proximity Alignment Repetition Contrast Proximity Group related items together – one cohesive, visual unit. Non-related items should not be grouped together – causes confusion. If more than 3 to 5 items on page, try to group elements. Don’t spread separate elements Continue Reading

Check for folders and files where access is denied with Powershell

The following script is from another blog that was slightly adapted by someone who left a comment there: $errors=@() gci -recurse -Path “C:\test” -ea SilentlyContinue -ErrorVariable +errors | Out-Null $errors.Count $errors | select -expand categoryinfo | select reason,targetname | export-csv -NoTypeInformation -Delimiter “;” ErrorList.csv I created a folder on the Continue Reading

Check and amend the read only attribute with Powershell

We can use the following to iterate through a series of folders and check the read only status of the files: $Directories = “C:\drop\Test Complete\Dev\Global\Master\SeleniumTests” gci -Recurse -Path ${Directories} | select fullname,isreadonly It is not necessary to specify the list of directories as a variable but for my use it Continue Reading

Navigation

Design documentation – Navigation Chart and Storyboard Design documentation – includes variety of techniques including: navigation charts storyboards Techniques provide common understanding of development needs. Captures views of both clients and developers. Show organisation and structure of content. Navigation types Four main navigation types: Linear Navigate sequentially Build knowledge Example Continue Reading

Main Criteria for User Interface

Consider following when designing user interface: Navigation Do not get lost Consistency Help facility to guide Content Educational Entertaining Promotional Informational Look and Feel Colours to suit brief and create right mood Visually appealing Layout Uncluttered Clear Intuitive Clients/Users Meet expectations More specific users are, easier to target material and Continue Reading