GUI Bloopers 2.0, 2nd Edition

7

Responsiveness Bloopers

• Introduction
• Common responsiveness bloopers
• Reasons for poor responsiveness
• Avoiding responsiveness bloopers: Design principles
• Avoiding responsiveness bloopers: Techniques
• Conclusion

Introduction

Responsiveness is very important in determining the usability of software (Basic Principle 8, page 45). That’s “responsiveness,” not “performance” or “speed.” This chapter explains the difference and how to achieve responsiveness when performance is limited.

Highly responsive software:

• ■ lets you know immediately that your keystrokes, pointing device movements, and clicks were received;
• ■ estimates how long operations will take;
• ■ frees you to do other things while waiting;
• ■ manages ...