General Design Guidelines

Keep It Simple

When we say, "do one task extremely well," we obviously do not mean that the task has to be excessively narrow in definition. Rather, we mean avoid adding features that do not directly help with the task; this just adds redundancy. In defining your application, be clear about a particular task a user has to perform and provide an application that makes this easier. Perhaps two examples that interact with each other will make this clearer (on a personal computer this would be one application).

Cookbook--This application helps you figure out what food to cook. You can select recipes in the book and get a set of menus created for you. The application also deals with preparation times and figures out the order of tasks and when to start. If requested, it also gives you a list of required ingredients.

Grocery Store Helper--This application helps you shop at the grocery store. You could get the ingredient list you already created with the cookbook and add other items you need. The application reorders items to match the store's order, it does price and size comparisons, provides easy checkoff operations, and so on.


An online version of Programming for the Newton using Macintosh, 2nd ed. ©1996, 1994, Julie McKeehan and Neil Rhodes.

Last modified: 1 DEC 1996