10 inventions on Improving Toolbars: A TRIZ based analysis
This work addresses usability challenges in GUI design for software developers and designers, but it is incremental as it applies existing TRIZ methods to toolbar optimization.
The article analyzes desired and ideal features of toolbars in graphical user interfaces, identifying contradictions from a TRIZ perspective and deriving solutions using inventive principles, with 10 inventions from the US patent database illustrating improvements.
Toolbar is one among the popular elements of a graphical user interface. The other popular elements of graphical user interface are buttons, menu, scrollbar, dialog box etc., all of which provide easy access to various functions of a GUI System. A toolbar often does a similar function as the menu but with certain differences. A menu has the advantage of holding a large number of items without needing any additional screen space. In contrast, each button on the toolbar permanently occupies some space on the screen. It is not possible to implement large number of functions through a toolbar, as they will occupy more and more valuable screen space. However, the toolbar has an advantage as it gives a single click access to any function unlike a menu system where the user has to navigate through sub-menus to ultimate discover the item he is looking for. This article explores the desired features of a toolbar and the ideal features of an advanced toolbar. The contradictions are described from a TRIZ perspective and solutions are derived using Inventive principles. Besides the article illustrates 10 inventions on improving Toolbars selected from US patent database.