Managing Invisible Objects in a Software Application to Improve Usability

Massive amounts of information are dealt with in the current generation of software applications. Numerous commands and situations are to be issued by the user in these systems. Visualizing, finding and triggering the desired functionalities in an application are important subjects in User Interface (UI) design process. In this paper, some new aspects in managing both hidden and visible concepts of form based UI's are offered to have more friendlier and reliable UI. First, the automatic arrangement and enhancement of visual objects in the forms is proposed to make the UI customizable for each user automatically. Then, making hidden objects and commands - such as shortcuts and application agents in the switch bar window- visible is offered to reduce bewildered situations and time to trigger a command/application. Finally, the main factors of a UI are evaluated based on the offered suggestions.

Keywords:

Human-Computer Interaction , User Interface Design , Information Visualization , Software Engineering