Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) is a software development document which offers application developers a set of recommendations. The aim is to improve the experience for the users: making the interfaces more intuitive. Most guides limit themselves to creating a common look and feel with other applications in a particular desktop environment. The guides enumerate specific policies. Policies are sometimes based on studies of human-computer interaction (so called usability studies), but most are based on arbitrary conventions chosen by the platform developers. Software engineering (SE) is the profession concerned with specifying, designing, developing and maintaining software applications by applying technologies and practices from computer science, project management, and other fields. ... Intuition has many meanings across many cultures, including: quick and ready insight seemingly independent of previous experiences and empirical knowledge immediate apprehension or cognition knowledge or conviction gained by intuition the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference. ... Look and feel refers to design aspects of a graphical user interface - in terms of both colours, shapes, layout, typefaces, etc (the look); and, the behaviour of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes, and menus (the feel). It is used in reference to both software and websites. ... In graphical computing, a desktop environment (DE) offers a complete graphical user interface (GUI) solution to operate a computer. ... Human-computer interaction (HCI) is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers. ...

Human User Interface guidelines will dictate a set of rules for general usability. They often describe the visual design rules, including icon design and style. Frequently they specify how user input and interaction mechanisms work. Some describe the language style. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Human-computer interaction (HCI) is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers. ...

An HIG will sometimes also define standard terminology and semantics related to certain elements or actions. In general this is restricted to the semantics of the desktop environment or the file system. As the majority of user problems come from the semantics of the applications this is a drawback to most HIG. Terminology is the set of all the terms related to a given subject field or discipline. ... In general, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... In graphical computing, a desktop environment (DE) offers a complete graphical user interface (GUI) solution to operate a computer. ... In computing, a file system is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. ...

The more important version of HIG are those done for groups or applications. In this case the HIG will build on a platform HIG by adding the common semantics for a range of functions.

The central aim of an HIG is to create a consistent experience across the environment (generally an operating system or desktop environment), including the applications and other tools being used. This means both applying the same visual design and creating consistent access to and behaviour of common elements of the interface - from simple ones such as buttons and icons up to more complex constructions, such as dialog boxes. In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ... In graphical computing, a desktop environment (DE) offers a complete graphical user interface (GUI) solution to operate a computer. ... Application has the following meanings: In general, an application is using something abstract for a more concrete use. ... In computing, a button (sometimes known as a command button or push button) is a widget which provides the user a simple way to trigger an event, such as clearing the display on a calculator program. ... Several desktop icons from the Windows operating system A computer icon is a small graphic, usually ranging from 16 pixels by 16 pixels up to 128 pixels by 128 pixels, which represents a file, folder, application or device on a computer operating system. ... Dialog boxes are special windows which are used by computer programs or by the operating system to display information to the user, or to get a response if needed. ...

HIGs should be taken at face value, the recommendations and advices are meant to help developers create better applications, but developers are naturally free to break them if they think that the guidelines do not fit their application. The only repercussion for doing so may be that the organisation publishing the HIG does not give the application its blessing. Mozilla Firefox's user interface, for example, goes against the GNOME project's HIG, which is one of the main arguments for including Epiphany instead of Firefox in the GNOME distribution. But such departures should only be taken when there is evidence from usability testing that the interface is improved. Mozilla Firefox (originally known as Phoenix and briefly as Mozilla Firebird) is a free, cross-platform, graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of volunteers . ... Lawn gnome A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its small stature and subterranean lifestyle. ... Epiphany is a web browser for the GNOME computer desktop. ... Usability testing is a means for measuring how well people can use something (such as a web page, a computer interface, a document, or a device) for its intended purpose. ...

See also

• User interface

The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...

External links

• GNOME Human Interface Guidelines
• KDE User Interface Guidelines
• Apple HIG
• Apple Human Interface Guidelines
• Microsoft Windows User Experience
• Windows XP - Guidelines for Applications
• Common User Access