Usability Maxims

In 1997 Arnold M Lund published his Usability Maxims in the Ergonomics in Design journal:

1. Know thy user and you are not thy user.
2. Things that look the same should act the same.
3. The information for the decision needs to be there when the decision is needed.
4. Error messages should actually mean something to the user and tell the user how to fix the problem.
5. Every action should have a reaction.
6. Everyone makes mistackes, so every mistake should be fixable.
7. Don’t overload the user’s buffers.
8. Consistency, Consistency, Consistency (alternative version of 2).
9. Minimise the need for a mighty memory (alternative of 7).
10. Keep it simple.
11. The user should always know what is happening.
12. The more you do something the easier it should be to do.
13. The user should control the system. THe system shouldn’t control the user. The user is the boss, and the system should show it.
14. Eliminate unnecessary decisions, and illuminate the rest.
15. The best journey is the one with the fewest steps. Shorten the distance between the user and the goal.
16. The user should be able to do what the user wants to do.
17. If I made an error, let me know about it before I get into REAL trouble.
18. You should always know how to find out what to do next.
19. The idea is to empower the user, not speed up the system.
20. Things that look different shoudl act different.
21. Don’t let people accidentally shoot themselves.
22. Even experts are novices at some point. Provide help.
23. Keep it neat. Keep it organized.
24. Provide a way to bail out and start over.
25. Design for regular people and the real world.
26. The fault is not in thyself, but in they system.
27. Colour is information.
28. If it is not needed, its not needed.
29. Everything in its place, and a place for everything.
30. The user should be in agood mood when done.
31. If I made an error, at least let me finish my thought before I have to fix it.
32. Let people shap the system to themselves and pain it with their own personality.
33. “Cute” is not a good adjective for systems.
34. To know the system is to love it.

Sources:
Lund, Arnold M. 1997. Expert ratings of usability maxims. Ergonomics in Design, Vol 5 No 3, pp 15-20.

Mealy, Erica et al. 2007. Improving Usability of Software Refactoring Tools, Appendix A Usability Guideline Sets, in Proceedings of the Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC), 10-13 Apr 2007, Melbourne. www.itee.uq.edu.au/~erica/papers/AppendixA-InitialGuidelines.pdf