Codes and Conventions of Websites.

Jakob Nielsen has 10 Usability Heuristics. They are called Heuristics because they are suggestions of things to consider than orders to abide by. These are the ten general rules for user interface design.

• Visibility of Systems Status; The system should always tell the user what is going on so that they don't become inpatient with the system.

• Match between system and the real world; The system should use terms and language the users know. It should use real world conventions and appear in a correct order.


• User Control and Freedom; If a user clicks on an unwanted connection there should be a clear way back to the original site. This means easy undo and redo.


• Consistency and Standards; Things should be easy to understand, straight forward and constant.


• Error Prevention; Evan though there are error messages that pop up there should be a system that prevents the error from even occurring. The system should search for errors before the user continues to the site, and then it should still give them an option or alert them a error may occur.


• Recognition rather then Recall; The options should be clear at every point of the site. This will help the user minimize their memory load. This is because they will not have to remember one thing to another. Instructions for direction and use of the system should be clearly shown and also visible where ever the user is on site.


• Flexibility and efficiency of use; This could be an unseen device seen device by the user of the programme. This could be an accelerator for example, it could often speed up the interaction of the system and could also boost the rate at which the computer runs.


• Aesthetic and minimalist design; The programme should not have any written text that is not necessary or rarely needed. It should also minimize the amount of unneeded text to free up space the more relevant stuff.


• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors ; When a problem is found they should be explained to the user in plain language no coding. They should also explain how to resolve the problem of automatically try to tackle it.

• Help and Documentation; Although a lot of sites use documentation for help this often gets in the way of what we want. This information should be either hidden away, or made smaller for the user to look for. How ever nothing should go wrong on the site so help information should not be needed much.