If you haven’t read or you want to know what is heuristics, why we need them & who made this? For that, you can check this article- Heuristics #1: Visibility of system status.
Who doesn’t like “Shortcuts”? I think everybody loves shortcuts. Everybody wants to reach or to perform well, fast & ahead. We have shortcuts in our life that either pays us well or can make the situation worse. But today we talking about the shortcuts that will always pay good value to the users & also saves the valuable time of the users as well.
Most of the digital products like social media platforms, SAAS(software-as-a-service), mobile applications, websites have a kind of an action that frequently repeats. The series of action changes from platform to platform.
The user interface should be designed in such a way that can be easily used by beginners as well as expert users. The digital platform should be made in such a way where the beginner can learn and adapt while performing the repeated actions and after settling enough time with the platform, the same user needs to be provided the “shortcuts” or “Accelerators” which helps to perform the task quickly & more efficiently.
We can call the Accelerator a feature of a user interface that is designed to speed up the specific process or action. For the inexperienced user, it might be a problem to learn or to remember the shortcuts, but for the experienced user, shortcuts can save a lot of time & effort. So we need to make platforms in such a way that users can able to perform the task with shortcuts and without the shortcuts.
For the inexperienced user it might be a problem to learn or to remember the shortcuts, but for the experienced user shortcuts can save a lot of time & efforts.
In simple terms, System must be designed in a way that can be used by experienced & inexperienced users.
Let’s understand it more clearly by the set of examples:
Example 1, Dribbble- Website
See how Dribbble is providing the shortcuts to perform the actions in their platform. The most commonly used shortcut is “L” for like. This can be easily used by beginners as well as the expert users.
Example 2, Adobe Photoshop- Windows Software
Adobe allows the user to be enough flexible to edit and make their own series of shortcuts. This flexibility is for the advanced set of users. Users can change and create shortcuts according to the area of their profession.
Example 3, Medium- Website
The most common shortcut used worldwide is to make the fonts-Bold(Ctrl+b), Italic(Ctrl+i) & Underline(Ctrl+u). You can find these shortcuts in any of the editors available on this planet.
Example 4, Trading Application- iPhone
In trading applications, the user needs to maintain their eyes on the company’s share market frequently and sometimes continuously. So these kinds of applications provide the users the ability to make their “Watchlists”.
A watchlist is a kind of a stock list that was prepared by the user himself to have a watch on the stock prices whenever they want.
Example 5, 3d Touch- iPhone
The iPhone has the 3d touch which is used to make the core actions of the applications. See how the user can perform the core and the most common actions of the application by using the 3d touch. The list of the actions varies from application to application.
Example 6, Adobe Xd- Software
Xd is also providing the list of the files that the user had recently worked on. This list helps the user to open the files quickly without navigating through the folders which directly reduces the time and efforts of the user.
Example 7, Keyboard- Hardware
The Keyboard also comes up with a series of buttons which are the shortcuts to handle the system. You can call it a multimedia keyboard.
* Btw it’s a nice set of wireless keyboard & mouse from the Logitech.
So we need to design a system where the beginner can find their way to perform the action without keeping in mind the shortcuts. And the experienced user can use the shortcuts to perform the action quickly and efficiently.
I hope I delivered it to the point. I will post the eight heuristic principle exactly after a week. Stay tuned!
Will appreciate your feedback, love & comments.
Wear your mask 😷, wash your hands 🧼 & maintain social distance 📏.
Namaste 🙏.
If you haven’t read or you want to know what is heuristics, why we need them & who made this? For that, you can check this article- Heuristics #1: Visibility of system status.