A Review on User Interface Design Principles to Increase Software Usability for Users with Less Computer Literacy

This article presents a review on how software usab ility could be increased for users with less comput er literacy. The literature was reviewed to extract us er interface design principles by identifying the s imilar problems of this group of users. There are differen t groups of users with less computer literacy. Howe ver, based on the literature three groups of them need s pecial attention from software designers. The first group is elderly users, as users with lack of computer ba ckground. The second group is children, as novice u sers and the third group is users with mental or physica l disorders. Therefore, this study intends to focus on the mentioned groups, followed by a comparison between previous researches in the field, which reveals tha t some commonalities exist between the needs of these users. These commonalities were used to extract us er interface design principles such as (a) reducing th e number of features available at any given time, ( b) avoiding using computer terms, (c) putting customiz ation ability for font, color, size and (d) using appropriate graphical objects such as avatar or ico n. Taking these principles into account can solve s oftware usability problems and increase satisfaction of use rs with less computer literacy.