Vikings Write Great Design Guidelines
I must say part of my excitement about this may be due to my Scandinavian roots, but it may also be because I wrote User Interface Guidelines for about two years. The Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry has written some remarkable guidelines on designing simplified forms on the internet. It’s called ELMER 2 (PDF - 1 MB) and if I’d had something like this when I started out, it would have been my secret weapon on designing input forms .
Not only that, but it’s a very tight example of design documentation - putting the guidelines in a tabular format with cross references and clear examples. It also has a glossary of terms used in the document (for example, “inline error” and “standardized text”.) So simple even a blond could use it!
And don’t forget, as the document footer says… “In case of discrepency, the Norwegian version prevails.”
August 13th, 2007 at 7:56 am
As a member of the ELMER2 project group it’s very rewarding to get this kind of input from people who weren’t part of the group.
When new people read the guidelines and find them usable (both content and formatting), it’s sort of a usability test of the guidelines. It’s nice to see that you like the ELMER guidelines. I hope they’ll be of help, too.
If you have any input or suggestions for improvements, please contact me.
And again, thank you very much for the praise! :-)