In my free time, I’m working on a risk analysis application. I have already finished the mathematical and simulation engines, but I’m stuck with the design of the user interface. I want my application to be as easy-to-use as possible for Excel users, but I don’t want to make it an Excel add-in, because Excel takes ages to load add-ins. So I’m going to use the old and venerable MFC.
I want to make these things easy in my application:
Modeling tasks:
- Defining probability and uncertainty distributions
- Defining mathematical relations between the variables
- Separating uncertainty from variability (second-order risk modeling)
- Validating the risk model
- What-if (sensitivity) analysis
Data manipulation/display tasks:
- Importing/exporting data from/to Excel and databases
- Displaying nice graphs to the user
Do you know any guidelines I could take into consideration in the design of the user interface? The only examples I know, LINGO and Rockwell Arena, are actually examples of what NOT to do. Perhaps I will need to include a simple scripting language in the system but, in that case, it will be an option for advanced users, not for everybody.
1) For risk-specific functionality (at least, in financial world), one of the important guidelines is to allow easy viewing of summary level risk as well as easy drill-down to details (e.g. enterprise-wide down to security level)
2) Plus, don’t forget standard GUI design guidelines – there’s always Nielsen and there’s JoelOnSoftware’s Joel Spolsky’s design book and series of articles.
High level,
make sure your controls are intuitive (do what the user expects them to),
minimize the amount of work (eye and hand movements) user needs to do to accomplish most frequent tasks,
Allow easy linking (e.g. no dead ends – if you are displaying a list of securities, make an easy way to jump from security’s name to detail screen for that security)
Always always usability-test.