Don't Shortchange the User With a Minimalist Approach to Writing User Instructions

An interesting justification for longer and more ccurate help and intruction text. This flies in the face of what many usability "gurus" have told us. Interesting read.

During the research mania, tripped over this old column: Why good design comes from bad design. Ah yeah, thaz right.

The standards research continues, with many fine finds

from GUI Guidelines

Examples of Developer Reactions to GUIs

"That's a great way to show ..."
"... and what does Cntl-click do?"
"Can I see all eight views at the same time?"
"This will make great screendumps!"
"Can I launch all the other tools from this one?"
"How much of the appearance can I customize?"

Examples of User Reactions to GUIs

"Why is it taking so long?"
"Which part am I supposed to be looking at?"
"Why is it showing me this?"
"What do I do next?"
"How can that help me improve my program?"
"How much work does it take?"

Personally I think GUI guidelines/standards/patterns would make a great wiki.

So I'm researching interface standards, and I'm reading AskTog: First Principles and in the middle of the usual "consistency good" and "Fitt's Law" was this gem of a concept...

"Human Interface Objects

Human-interface objects are not necessarily the same as objects found in object-oriented systems. Our objects include folders, documents, and the trashcan. They appear within the user's environment and may or may not map directly to an object-oriented object. In fact, many early gui's were built entirely in non-object-oriented environments.
Human-interface objects can be seen, heard, touched, or otherwise perceived.
Human interface objects that can be seen are quite familiar in graphic user interfaces. Objects that play to another sense such as hearing or touch are less familiar. Good work has been done in developing auditory icons (Gaver).
Human-interface objects have a standard way of interacting.
Human-interface objects have standard resulting behaviors.
Human-interface objects should be understandable, self-consistent, and stable."

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of universal icons (which of course, aren't really universal, but that's my current codename for the idea) such as the magnifying glass for zoom, or an envelope for email. The few icons that actually don't need labels.

What are some examples of human-interface objects? (Beyond Tog's trash can, file folder, etc)

User Interface Design Tips is a solid introduction to some of the concepts of design for applications. This one got me thinking:

"Gray things out, do not remove them. You often find that at certain times it is not applicable to give your users access to all the functionality of an application. You need to select an object before you can delete it, so to reinforce your mental model the application should do something with the Delete button and/or menu item. Should the button be removed or grayed out? Gray it out, never remove it. By graying things out when they shouldn’t be used people can start building an accurate mental model as
to how your application works. If you simply remove a widget or menu item instead of graying it out then it is much more difficult for your users to build an accurate mental model because they only know what is currently available to them, and not what is not available. The old adage that out of sight is out of mind is directly applicable here."

While this rings true, I've seen it fail on websites in testing. Users think a grayed out link is simply a gray link, and can't figure out why it doesn't work.

Perhaps this is one of those cases where a weblication is sufficiantly different from an application that users aren't ready for a standard to make the leap across. Of perhaps there are so few standards in link design that users just click everything, hoping that something will eventually work.