# Good User Interface – FICUS system

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2020/03/20/good-user-interface-ficus-system/
- Published: 2020-03-20T16:14:31+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

FICUS stands for fast, interactive, consistent, usable and simple. Really, this 
is a contraption meant to be memorable.

### Fast

 * interfaces that make users wait are breaking flows. They should strive to be 
   real world fast – remember when you tun a facet on and the water takes a while
   to run? Frustration.

### Interactive

 * all action that is directed at the interface should respond with two kinds of
   feedback: roger and status. Animation is the “Roger” and status is repeating 
   back what is going to happen next. That is because working with an interface 
   is the same as Walkie-talkie speak, you need reassurance that the other party
   got the right message.

### Consistent

 * a good interface classifies, through some internal system, types of interaction
   into groups, and should try to behave the same for groups of similar actions.
   Consistency should not be forced across groups of interactions but be the law
   inside same kinds of interactions. Consistency allows users to remember patterns
   and hence generalize their feeling of trust in their knowledge.

### Usable

 * ideally, interfaces should not depend on anything else other than the intent 
   of the user. Since we don’t have mind reading capabilities, yet, we use affordances.
   These affordances are what should be thought of individually to be disconnected
   from ability, savviness and culture. The ideal affordance is acultural, provides
   options to existing abilities and uses as much as possible intuitions learned
   by a preschooler.

### Simple

 * simple as in not complicated. Complex systems will require complex interfaces,
   but complexity can be managed through all the other FICUS properties (fast, interactive,
   consistent, usable).
 * Complication represents two things: unexpected entanglement or too long entanglement.
   Briefly when parts of the interface depend on surprising, nonsensical other parts
   of the interface, or when short term memory is solicited exhaustively because
   of long chains of successive operations required. If this is avoided, simplicity
   exists and it will be picked up by users, because it will result in easy to grasp
   and small cause-effect chains.