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Software Testing and Quality Assurance
The seven important traits of a good user interface are as shown in figure 5.1.
Figure 5.1: Seven Good User Interface Traits
We will now discuss the seven traits of a good user interface.
1. Follow Standards and Guidelines: It is very important for every software product to adhere to
standards and guidelines. When the software is running on Windows platform, it is assumed that
it is adhering to a set of standards.
Did you know? The standards and guidelines for Apple can be obtained from the book titled
Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines published by Addison-Wesley.
While testing for usability of a software product on a specific platform, you need to adhere to the
standards and guidelines of that platform. Test cases should be created based on the standards
and guidelines generally developed by the usability testing experts.
At times, the software product you are testing might not have a standard. In such situations, the
design team creates a usability standard for the software product.
Standards and guidelines provide a better idea about when to use the check boxes, the
option buttons, warnings, critical messages, and information especially in ambiguous
situations.
2. Intuitive: The Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS), Altair 8800 was the first
personal computer released in 1975. The user interfaces were switches and lights. This computer
was created for hobbyists. However, in today’s world, a customer looks for more in every
software product. In view of the customer demands, we need to ensure that the following points
are considered while performing user interface testing.
Some of the things to be considered while performing the user interface testing are:
(a) Check if the user interface is clean, unobtrusive, and not cluttered with options and
information. The user interface must not get in the way of what you want to perform or the
functions you need, and the expected response must be obvious.
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