Stephanie Welsh worked for Petrie’s database administrator. She had been overseeing two interns who were helping her translate conceptual database designs into physical designs. As they were finishing up the task she had assigned to them, she realized that they would soon need something else to do.

She called Sanjay Agarwal, one of the most talented interface designers in Petrie’s IT shop.

“Hi Sanjay, this is Stephanie. Got a minute?”

“For you, I can make the time,” Sanjay replied.

“Well, this is not about me, this is about my two interns. They are about done with the database work I assigned them. They need something else to do, and I thought of you. Aren’t you starting work on some of the customized Web designs for ‘No Customer Escapes?’ ” 

“Yep,” Sanjay said. “That’s next on my list of two thousand things I have to do this week.”

“So I can send them over? That will be great. They are both good workers and very bright, so I think you will get a lot out of them.”

“How much do they know about Web interface design?” Sanjay asked.

“Not much, I don’t think.”

“Well, that’s not the answer I wanted. OK, I know what

I’ll do. I’ll have them derive a list of guiding principles for good Web interface design. They can start by looking at the website design principles listed on Jakob Nielsen’s site [www.nngroup.com]. His site is extensive, with many short articles of helpful hints for making websites usable.”

After visiting Nielsen’s site, the interns came up with the list of guidelines featured in PE Figure 12-1.

Case Questions

1. Visit the Nielsen website and update PE Figure 12-1 based on guidelines and articles posted since this list was compiled. Add only elements you believe are essential and relevant to the design of “No Customer Escapes.”

2. Review Chapters 10 and 11. Combine into your answer to Case Question 12-66 guidelines from these chapters. How unique do you consider the human interface design guidelines for a website to be from general application design guidelines? Justify your answer.

3. Search for other Web-based resources, besides the Nielsen website, for website design. In what ways do the design guidelines you find contradict your answer to Case Question 12-67? Explain the differences. 

4. This chapter introduced the concepts of loyalty and trustworthiness as necessary for customers to interact with a website. What elements could be added to a customer loyalty site such as “No Customer Escapes” to improve the levels of loyalty and trustworthiness of Petrie’s customers?

Pe Figure 12-1

Transcribed Image Text:

Feature Guideline Interacting menus- When users select something on one menu, options change in other menus on the same page. These changing options confuse users. It's hard to make a preferred option visible when it depends on a selection in another menu. avoid Very long menus- avoid Long menus require users to scroll through them, and they can't see all of their options at once. It's better to break up the menu as a series of submenus or to represent some of the choices as hypertext links. It is usually faster for users to simply type the abbreviation (e.g., a two-character state code) than to select it from a drop-down menu. Free-form input requires validation by a code on the web page or on the server. Menus of abbreviations- avoid