CSE463 Assignment-6 Universal Principles of Design Solution

1. Accessibility:

Description of the principle: The principle of accessibility believes that the design of the application or website should be usable by people of diverse abilities, without special any special help needs.The principle has four characteristics of accessible designs namely perceptibility, operability, simplicity, and forgiveness. When everyone can perceive the design, regardless of sensory abilities, then perceptibility is said to be achieved. Operability is the usage of the design by everyone. Simplicity means regardless of the literacy level, the user should be able to use the design. Forgiveness is achieved when the design decreases the frequency of a mistake done and the consequence of the mistake done.

Proposed Usage of the Principle: I would like to use this principle to redesign the home page by adding a master navigation with all the shortcuts for the main functionalities. I would also like to add feature to show whether the user is logged in or not. I would also like to add a sitemap to increase the productive usage of the website

Usability Issue: The irctc website is badly organized as it missing the major functionalities. The website does not provide a master navigation for the users to use it. The home page does not also indicate where a user is logged in or not.




2. Consistency

Description of the principle: Consistency is defined as expressing similar parts of the system in similar ways. Consistency helps people to efficiently transfer knowledge, learn new things quickly, and focus attention on the relevant aspects of a task. Consistency depends on four things namely: aesthetic, functional, internal, and external.

Proposed Usage of the Principle: The IRCTC website does not have a consistent master navigation in all the pages. As the functionalities change the website does not manage a constant home page format for all the functionalities

Usability Issue: The IRCTC website provided booking for trains and flights at the same place but there are two different websites with two different navigations and login for the purpose to be solved. There can be a master login which can be used if the user wants to perform any one of the functionalities or both.



3. Color:

Description of the principle: Color helps to make a design more visually interesting and aesthetic. It also reinforce the organization and meaning of elements in a design. Color depends on factors such as number of colors, color combination, saturation and symbolism.

Proposed Usage of the Principle: The website does not have a good color palette. The website can be redesigned to all more color and have it more interesting for the users to access it. The website is only made up of blue and white color for all the functionalities. A color pattern can be introduced and different basic color combinations can be used for different functionalities.

Usability Issue: The website is only made up of blue and white color for all the functionalities. The color should help to highlight the functionalities being used at that particular time.



4. Alignment

Description of the principle: Alignment is defined as the placement of elements such that edges line up along common rows or columns, or their bodies along a common center. Alignment creates a sense of unity and cohesion, which contributes to the design’s overall aesthetic and perceived stability. In paragraph text, left-alignment and right-alignment text blocks provide more powerful alignment cues than do center-alignment text blocks

Proposed Usage of the Principle: The IRCTC website has some pages which can be clearly aligned. Some important pages need redesign to increase clarity and preciseness to the pages.

Usability Issue: The flight cooking functionality of IRCTC website. The website is full cluttered with lot of unnecessary information which should be properly aligned and categorised.



5. Readability

Description of the principle: Readability is defined as the ability to understand the prose based on the complexity of words and sentences. Readability is based on factors such as word length, word commonality, sentence length, number of clauses in a sentence, and number of syllables in a sentence. Complex information should be presented in the simplest possible form, so that the focus is on the information rather than the way it is presented.

Proposed Usage of the Principle: We can apply this principle to the IRCTC website and make the description precise. The website provides a lot of information to the user which is not presented in a concise way. This decreases the ability of the users to focus, read and understand the information provided.

Usability Issue: The website designed to perform a lot of functionality which come with too much description. This disinterests the user and the user tends to bypass the information.