Abstract:

The goal of the paper is to suggest the Graphic User Interface (GUI) as an important characteristic in the evaluation of information systems quality and effectiveness. Information systems are commonly evaluated by the offer of functions and functionality of the given system; seldom do the designers pay attention to the appearance with the intention to improve the quality of usage. A well designed GUI will contribute to a more efficient usage of the information system and support the quality of the output values. In the present paper, a literature search is presented which specifies the given problems and clarifies some notions which have different interpretations. The second part of the paper contains a representative list of papers with their extended abstracts. The studies presented in the selected papers prove the assertion that there exists a direct relationship between the user and the graphic software environment. One of the selected papers is concerned with colors in the learning process – the study points to the effect of colors on the learning processes of a human being and at the same time investigates how mental blocks in the form of various expectations can hinder the learning process. Another study views the user as a dynamic system affected by a large number of factors, pointing to the fact that man is not a constant characteristic and this phenomenon must be taken into account in the design of an information system. Another study investigates the learning process in the learning of new technologies at the user´s first contact. One of the papers is concerned with the symbols used for the graphical elements of the system – an experiment is carried out to find out to what extent the symbols used for the icons of a specific IS correspond to what they represent. The last study presents and experiment in which users were presented several ways of performing simple operations over applications. The results show the degree of difficulty with which the operations were performed in the different ways.