What are screen design standards in interface design?

Screen design standards

Screen design standards are set and documented before an interface is designed. These are conventions that are to be followed in the design throughout. Some common standardized elements include controls, colors, fonts, and terminology. The location and format of conventional components such as navigation bars and dialog boxes should also be standardized.

Benefits of screen design standards

Screen design standards help bring consistency to the interface. Consistency is vital for ease of use and ease of learning in the interface. These, in turn, increase the usability and user experience of the interface. Screen design standards also reduce the time and cost of design, because essential decisions have already been made and documented and elements can be reused wherever possible.

Categories of screen design standards

Controls

Controls include check boxes, option buttons, list boxes, toggle buttons, dropdown lists, text fields, and so on. These should be standardized so that they're consistent throughout the interface and the user doesn't get confused. For example, on an e-commerce website, the screen design standards may require the use of spin boxes for numeric values and check boxes for options, as shown in the illustration below.

Product/process windows

The screen design standards should include window conventions depending on whether the developed application is product-oriented or process-oriented. Product-oriented applications have a clear work product that can be created and saved. An example of a product-oriented application is MS Word, whose product is a Word document. On the other hand, process-oriented applications support some work processes, such as a file management system. Accordingly, the design standards should be decided, such as standardizing how a new or saved text document will look.

Dialog box content

It is necessary to standardize dialog boxes for the interface. Components such as required/optional choices, editable/uneditable fields, and push button positions on dialog boxes should be decided upon and used consistently throughout the design. For example, all interface dialog boxes of the word processing application below should have the "Cancel" and "Yes" buttons in the same place.

Message box content

The content of message boxes, whether they announce an error, warning, or status, should be standardized. The wording and terminology used should be consistent. The location of push buttons also plays an important role here and should be standardized for a consistent user experience.

Feedback

These standards define how feedback is provided in the interface. Feedback can be in the form of visual cues, colors, message boxes, or symbols. For example, red color is commonly used to indicate an error and green for success. These conventions are decided and documented in the screen design standards for consistent use.