Bastien and Scapin's 8 criteria
Bastien and Scapin's 8 ergonomic criteria and their 18 elementary criteria: recognising which criterion an interface flaw breaks and what each one asks for.
- 36 cards
- 4 topics
- Free
The outline, topic by topic
Each topic is weighted the way the exam weighs it.
- Concepts
- Questions
- Sort and link
- Scenarios
A few cards from the deck
Guidance: what is it?
Show the answer
All the means that advise, orient, inform and lead the user during the interaction: prompting, grouping of items, immediate feedback, legibility.
A button that does not react to a click breaks immediate feedback, one of this criterion's parts: the user cannot tell whether the action was registered.
After a click on “Pay”, nothing moves for six seconds: no spinner, no message. Which elementary criterion is broken?
- Immediate feedback (guidance)
- Information density (workload)
- Flexibility (adaptability)
- Label consistency (consistency)
Show the answer
Immediate feedback (guidance)
Immediate feedback tells the user their action was registered. Without it, they click again and may pay twice.
The 8 criteria are: guidance, workload, explicit control, …, error management, …, significance of codes and names, and ….
Show the answer
The 8 criteria are: guidance, workload, explicit control, adaptability, error management, consistency, significance of codes and names, and compatibility.
These 8 criteria break down into 18 elementary criteria, for example prompting under guidance or flexibility under adaptability.
Workload: what is it?
Show the answer
Everything that cuts the perceptual and memory effort and the number of actions the user must make to reach a goal: brevity and information density.
Ten fields for a simple search, or a screen where everything is shown at once, tire the user without helping them reach the goal.
In a messaging app, “Send” is green on the right on the compose screen but grey on the left in the confirmation window. Testers hesitate every time. What is the cause and the fix?
- Workload: remove the confirmation window altogether
- Guidance: add an explanatory tooltip on each button
- Compatibility: give the testers a training manual
- Consistency: same place and same colour everywhere
Show the answer
Consistency: same place and same colour everywhere
The same action changes look and place from one screen to the next: that is a consistency flaw. It is fixed with a shared rule, not by adding explanations.