UsabilityGuidelines

Usability guidelines are a structured set of recommendations intended to improve the ease with which people can use a product or system. They cover the design of user interfaces, tasks, content, and interactions, and are used by designers, developers, and usability professionals to create more effective and satisfying user experiences.

Guidelines can take the form of broad principles, concrete heuristics, checklists, or formal standards. Well-known examples include Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics, Ben Shneiderman's eight golden rules, and international standards such as ISO 9241-110 and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

They are applied during design and evaluation: in formative stages to guide decisions, in heuristic evaluation to identify usability problems, and in user testing to interpret task performance. Metrics commonly tracked include task success rate, time on task, error rate, and user satisfaction.

Guidelines are context-dependent and should be adapted to the user, task, and platform. Overly rigid adherence can stifle creativity, and some guidelines may conflict with other goals or constraints.

Critics argue that guidelines can become a checklist that misses the nuances of real users, so effective practice combines guidelines with user research and empirical testing. They are frequently updated to reflect new technologies, platforms, and accessibility requirements.

Usability guidelines form part of a broader usability engineering approach and are complemented by empirical methods, standards, and domain-specific best practices to support user-centered design.