Glossary » standard

standard

or “norm”; a rule for how user interfaces should be designed for given tasks, users, and contexts. User interface standards are usually encoded in style guides and are available for every major operating system. Standards help to ensure consistency across applications for users, thus reducing learning time and helping to prevent user errors.

Some common standards include:

• • which menu items exist and how they’re named, e.g. the Edit menu should contain Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste
  • what the appearance of user interface widgets should be, including the color, size, and shading of them, and how they respond to user input
  • how text should be selected and modified
  • what style icons should appear in and how to differentiate files from applications