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Apr

The importance of interface feedback

Posted by Matt on Thursday Apr 30, 2009 Under Development, Toasted Digital, design

Interface feedback is one of the most important parts of designing any interface, be it a basic website or a fully-blown desktop application. With it, users know exactly what’s going on in front of them. Without it, users are lost and confused.

But what IS interface feedback? The easiest way to understand interface feedback is to see it at work. Take a look at the two links below… 

websitelinks 

 

Which of the two links above did you instantly recognise as a link? The second one, no doubt. The design of the link made it instantly and completely obvious what its purpose was, whereas the first link gave no indication that it was anything other than page text.

 

Interface feedback isn’t limited to design and simply making features stand out, though. A huge part of interface feedback is pointing the user in the right direction. Take the following example…

 

editorfeedback-copy

 

A huge chunk of time spent on the above online image editor went towards making sure that interface feedback was plentiful and consistent across the GUI. Notice the following pieces of feedback from this one simple example:

  • The “BACKGROUND” button changing hue when the mouse cursor is above it, letting the user know that it can be clicked to create an effect
  • The dragging box around the text on the stage, letting the user know that the text is selected
  • The blue glow of the currently selected layer on the Layers Panel, letting the user know straight away which layer is selected

While interface feedback is obviously crucial to a successful interface, it often gets overlooked in the pursuit of artistic creativity. Ever been to a website that took your breath away with its flashy graphics, but you had no idea how to use it? That’s something that you want to avoid at all costs, so making sure that interface feedback is part of your design plan is crucial.

 

Thankfully, it’s entirely possible (and bordering on simple) to combine a great artistic look with fantastic interface feedback.

 

osxvistafeedback-copy

 

Keep interface feedback in mind when creating any sort of interface, and your users will be rewarded with a great user experience.

TD

One Response to “The importance of interface feedback”

  1. Sam Clarke Says:
    April 30th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    Tapping into what the user finds intuitive is one of the most important parts of web design. We have to look carefully at what makes the user identify a link, even before they’ve had feedback. Like you say, you can go to a website and it looks great, but what if you can’t tell copy from links?

    I think in the best cases, artistic creativity is coupled with well thought out layout to enhance the ease of use of a website, rather than hindering it, but so often that just isn’t the case.

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