Shape is the visual outline of a window and its internal relief. Relief is often used to establish a certain window type, enabling to guess what will happen once the window / control is invoked.
Buttons are widely rendered with a raised relief. This relief can be either a simple series of lines generating a pseudo-3D representation, an image generated by ray tracing, or a gradient.
Radiobuttons and checkbuttons, on the other hand, often »fade« into white-space; leaving the indicator alone to communicate their function. The indicator is an icon repeating the miniaturized normal button-like shape.
HighlightThickness is being used to highlight the control, to which keyboard events (focus) are sent.
Key strokes are being send to highlighted control.
The highlight frame draws attention to to the control, by increasing it.
The dimension of a control signifies its relative importance.
Design and Human Anatomy
A tool, designed for the use by man, should follow the human anatomy and provide its function in a most direct manner. The proportions of the human body, are perceived as pleasant. Facial recognition and expression, the left side of a human face is used to express emotion, whereas the right side is used for recognition. Fovea, the center of the field of vision. Only a very small area in the eye is truly able to see sharp. The visual impression outside of the the center of vision is blurred. Spatial orientation, the eyes are located above the hands. A scale control for example should present its indicator pointing to the top, the cursor, or finger on a touch screen, would obscure a down pointing indicator. Spatial orientation and interaction flow helps to remember. Spatial orientation is extremely important on hand held mobile devices and touch screens.
A tool, designed for the use by man, should follow the human anatomy and provide its function in a most direct manner.
The proportions of the human body, are perceived as pleasant.
Facial recognition and expression, the left side of a human face is used to express emotion, whereas the right side is used for recognition.
Fovea, the center of the field of vision. Only a very small area in the eye is truly able to see sharp. The visual impression outside of the the center of vision is blurred.
Spatial orientation, the eyes are located above the hands.
A scale control for example should present its indicator pointing to the top, the cursor, or finger on a touch screen, would obscure a down pointing indicator.
Spatial orientation and interaction flow helps to remember.
Spatial orientation is extremely important on hand held mobile devices and touch screens.
Shapes have to be customizable. They provide a visual clue to what has to be expected, before an action is performed. This communication is utterly dependent on the user’s visual ability, or the lack thereof. In addition, hardware constraints also affect recognition.
To ensure a usable Graphical User Interface –even for users with visual handicaps– is the natural responsibility of the windowing system. A fine example, where this challenge was accepted, can be seen under AQUA®: »Universal Access«.
Most, windowing systems do leave developers –and users– to shoulder this on their own. Thus colour and shape have to be user adaptable. In Tk, the best –and most flexible– method, is to aggressively use the Option Database.
Jeszra gives a fine-grained control over storing properties. Through Jeszra: menu entries, toolbar entries and even certain geometry properties can be put inside the Option Database.
Cultural Bias
Cultural conditioning, such as the falling diagonal, from left top to bottom right, in western culture. The falling diagonal should contain controls with a positive purpose. This is a cultural bias created by the writing direction. The best place for studying the relationship between the human body, cultural bias and art is an art gallery equipped with paintings from old Dutch masters. Left to right and right to left, can be studied in western movies, too. The hero or victor moves from left to right through the picture, and the villain from right to left (from the viewers point of view). The audience thus has foreknowledge of what will happen.
Cultural conditioning, such as the falling diagonal, from left top to bottom right, in western culture.
The falling diagonal should contain controls with a positive purpose. This is a cultural bias created by the writing direction.
The best place for studying the relationship between the human body, cultural bias and art is an art gallery equipped with paintings from old Dutch masters.
Left to right and right to left, can be studied in western movies, too. The hero or victor moves from left to right through the picture, and the villain from right to left (from the viewers point of view). The audience thus has foreknowledge of what will happen.
Copyright © 2009–2010 Arndt Roger Schneider