Guidelines for GUI design for a risk analysis app

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.