Objetivo #29

 Graphical User Interface

What´s a Graphical User Interface (GUI)?

A graphical user interface (GUI) is a digital interface where users interact with visual components such as icons, buttons, and menus. These visual elements convey relevant information and allow users to perform actions and understand what´s happening in a computer in a visual way.

Functions

• User Interaction: The GUIs  represent information and available actions in the computer, allowing an effective and friendly interaction with the virtual environment, some of the methods used by GUIs to enable this interaction are: scrolling, keyboard shortcuts, menus and icons, point and click.

• Multitasking: Most of current GUIs provide the possibility of running multiple applications at the same time, they can be minimized, maximized, or closed. 

• Visual Indications: GUIs provide visual indications of the system’s status, for example a progress bar shows the status of ongoing tasks.

• Accessibility: GUIs often include accessibility features to help users with disabilities, they may offer text-to-speech functionality for visually impaired users.

• Consistency: GUIs provide a consistent interface across many different applications, meaning that if you know how to manage and use an application, you can do the same with other applications.

Characteristics

• User-Friendly: GUIs are designed to be intuitive and easy to use, even for people with little computer experience. 

• Visual Feedback: GUIs provide immediate visual feedback to user actions. For example a change in the color of a function that was clicked. 

• Direct Manipulation: In a GUI, users can directly manipulate on-screen elements using a pointing device like a mouse or a touch screen.

• Customizability: Many GUIs allow users to customize the interface to suit their preferences.

Design Criteria 

• User: Tools are used to interact effectively with products, tasks or functions, being the link between the human being and the machine, and thus provide a good user experience.

• Personalization: Personalization in GUI design is about tailoring the user interface to meet the specific needs and preferences of each user

• Direction: It’s about making the user’s journey through the application intuitive and straightforward. The guidance provided to users help them to navigate through the interface.

• Consistency: Refers to uniformity and coherence in the appearance and behavior of a user interface across web pages, applications, or systems. So the user can familiarize with how to use the GUI.

• Clarity: It involves reflections on how to organize information to make a site intuitive, what fonts to use, and how to present graphic and textual elements.

• Estetic: It focuses on the visual and functional aspects of interaction, such as buttons, menus, icons, and graphic design.

• Feedback: It refers to the information conveyed to the user that acknowledges an action or occurrence.

Windows

Is a GUI element that allows display and interaction with multiple resources or data at the same time, most of the time represented in a rectangular shape.

Characteristics

• Rectangular Areas: Windows are rectangular areas on the screen that contain interactive elements.

• Program Container: They run in its own window, allowing users to work with multiple programs at the same time.

• Direct Manipulation: Users can move, resize, minimize, maximize or close these windows.

• Interactivity: Windows can contain buttons, menus, toolbars, dialog boxes, and other interactive elements.

Types of windows

• Application/Principal Windows: These are the windows that open when a program or application is started on the computer.

• Pop-up Windows: These are windows that suddenly appear on the screen while you are browsing the Internet.

• Children Windows: These are a type of window in the Graphical User Interface (GUI) that open within a principal window or "parent window".

• Response Window: Response windows are used to prompt the user for information or to display messages, warnings, or errors.

• MDI  Framework: It is a term within the GUI which allows users to work with more than one document at a time within the same application.

• Tabbed folders: They're a common feature in many software applications, especially web browsers and some text or image editing programs.

• Work unit: It refers to an application window in which a document, image, etc. is created or modified. Sometimes also called a "work area".

Window´s cohesion

Window cohesion refers to how events or functions are grouped within a window in a Graphical User Interface.

Types of cohesion

• Functional: This type of  cohesion refers to how closely related the responsibilities of a module or class are. So it limits the window to handling only one process event.

• Sequential: Groups predecessor/successor events in a window. It is one where events are grouped because they happen in sequence.

• Comunicational: Groups events that communicate with the same object. The advantage is that the events share the same data access code.

• Procedural: Is a type of cohesion in software design where all tasks performed by a software module contribute to a given program procedure, such as an iteration or decision process.

• Temporary: It groups events that are not related in themselves, but that happen at the same time.

• Logic: Logic puts events that share code together in the interface. Logical cohesion happens when events are grouped to share the same code.

• Coincidential: Coincidental cohesions occurs when elements within a module are grouped arbitrarily, with no significant relationship between them.

Assessment of cohesion levels:

Cohesion levels can range from high cohesion, which is most desirable, to low cohesion, which is least desirable.

1. Casual Cohesion (the worst)
2. Logical Cohesion (follows the worst)
   
3. Temporal Cohesion (moderate to poor)
4. Procedural Cohesion (moderate)
5. Communication Cohesion (moderate to good)
6. Sequential Cohesion(good)
7. Functional cohesion(the best)