Criteria for evaluating, and guiding the design of, interfaces 2.3.1.2 Criteria for evaluating, and guiding the design of, interfaces L.A.W Home Page. There are many other possible styles of interface, besides the three mentioned above. For any interface style there are a number of criteria which can be applied to the evaluation of an existing interface, or used to assist in the design of a new interface. This part of the chapter will provide a whistle stop tour of some of the most important of these criteria. There is no indication in the sequence in which they are presented of any particular degree of importance.
Consistency is important in order that a user can learn an interface quickly and easily.
Humans are very adept at pattern recognition and once a pattern in an interface has been recognised it can be used to predict the behaviour of parts of the interface which have yet to be explored. This advantage will be lost if parts of the interface are inconsistent with other parts of the interface. This advantage can be exploited between applications as well as within applications. An application which conforms to these conventions will be able to take advantage of the user's prior experience with other interfaces. These conventions are available as style guides which form part of the documentation of development toolkits.