Setup Wizard Download Windows 11

Modern wizard design places a premium on efficiency, making the Progress page optional for shorter operations, and often dispensing with the traditional Welcome page and Congratulations page at the beginning and end.

Thus in this article, a task is the basic function of a wizard (for example, the task of a setup wizard is to install a program). Sub-tasks are aspects of the larger task (for example, a sub-task of a setup wizard may be to configure the program to be installed). Finally, each wizard page is considered a step in a given sub-task or task (for example, there may be two or three steps involved in configuring the program).

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Does the wizard perform a single, atomic task? Don't use interactions that aren't single tasks (a whole program should never be a wizard unless it performs a single task). Don't use wizards to combine independent tasks or largely unrelated steps.

The Microsoft PowerPoint Print options dialog box contains many user input options, so you could present them in a wizard. However, there is no need to provide them sequentially, so a dialog box is a better choice.

Historically, wizards differed from ordinary UI in that they were designed to help users perform especially complex tasks (with steps residing in disparate locations) and often had built-in intelligence to help users succeed. Today, all UI should be designed to make tasks as simple as possible, so there is no need for a special UI just for this purpose.

Before creating a wizard, consider whether users really must be interrupted from the main flow of the program. There may be a lighter, inline, contextual solution that will ultimately feel more helpful and efficient to users. For example, a badly designed feature in a program doesn't warrant a wizard to explain and simplify it; it warrants redesign of the feature itself. A wizard should not be used as a band-aid to fix a more basic problem with the program.

Certain types of multi-step tasks lend themselves to the wizard form. For example, in Windows, several wizards involve connectivity functions (to the Internet or corporate network, or to peripheral devices such as printers and fax machines).

Here the function of the wizard is to mediate between something known and stable (the out-of-box operating system) and something unknown and variable (connectivity arrangements with a phone company or Internet service provider). The complexity of computing ecosystems is significant enough now that it is genuinely helpful to use wizards to reduce that complexity.

Other types of tasks that work well as Windows wizards include high-end functionality (such as speech and handwriting recognition) and rich media experiences (such as configuring options for making and publishing movies). Wizards can also be deployed for more basic multi-step tasks, such as troubleshooting. In short, if different users are likely to want to experience your program in widely different ways, this can indicate the need for a wizard and its capacity for multiple user input points.

Microsoft used to advise that wizards of three pages or fewer be designed as simple wizards, and those of four or more pages use an advanced wizard design (see the Windows User Experience guidelines from 1999). But current wizard design standards dispense with what had been one of the key differences between the simple and advanced forms (the use of the Welcome and Congratulations pages), so these categories now feel inadequate, and the number of pages determining the design choice seems arbitrary.

Your wizard should be as long or short as the task requires; there is no fixed guideline for its length. A one-page wizard should really be presented as a dialog box, so two pages is probably the most condensed form possible for a wizard.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you have a wizard that includes multiple decision points and branches, and frequently results in users losing track of their navigation path, you have exceeded a practical limit and should reduce the length of the wizard. Alternatively, you may be able to break the wizard up into several distinct tasks.

As you determine the most appropriate length for your wizard, pay particular attention to your target users. Programs for end users such as home consumers and office workers tend to use wizards to hide complexity; the wizards are as short as possible, with clean, simple page design, and pre-selected defaults for as many options as possible. By contrast, server wizards or programs intended for IT professionals tend to be longer and more complex. This group of target users has a much higher tolerance for making configuration decisions, and may in fact become suspicious if too much complexity is hidden.

In the setup wizard for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, page design is busier and the numerous choices require more thought, but the target audience is database administrators who expect tight control of feature selection.

For longer wizards, you may need to create branches of the task flow in which the sequence of pages may differ according to the user input provided "upstream." Branching is inherently dislocating for users, so you must design the user experience to convey stability. We recommend no more than two decision points that will cause branching in the entire wizard, and no more than one nested branch within a single branch.

Navigation guides often appear as a list of pages or sections of the wizard, looking a bit like a table of contents, in a column or pane on the left side of each page. Although the list persists throughout the wizard (the same list of pages appears on each page), there is some visual means of indicating where the user currently is in the sequence (for example, using bold to distinguish the active page or section).

Users can become confused about the meaning of the Back button in this scenario. Does clicking Back lead you to the previous page or section in the navigation guide, or the last page or section viewed? Because Windows wizards now place the Back button in the upper-left corner of wizard pages, rather than in the lower-right corner with the other commit buttons, users think of Back functionality as they do on the Web. So the best solution is to give your Back button the Web navigation meaning (clicking Back should lead to the last page or section viewed), and use the wizard navigational guide for sequential navigation.

Wizard design involves not only decisions pertaining to the entire task flow, like how to handle navigation and the branching experience, but also those pertaining to the individual pages that make up the wizard. The most important principle for designing good wizard pages is that of integrity: the contents of a page should belong together.

Wizard pages are significantly more usable if each one hangs together conceptually, dealing with only one aspect of the overall task. The main instruction is the primary means of achieving this. Clearly identify the goal or purpose of the page to users. Supplemental instructions, and any controls on the page, all pertain directly to the main instruction. Although wizard pages should present users with options for which some thought is required, that effort doesn't feel like work because it is tightly focused by the integrity of the page itself.

Unfortunately wizard designers often mistake users' rapid clicking of the Next button as evidence of the usability, simplicity, and integrity of their pages. The ultimate wizard experience isn't Next, Next, Next, Next, Finish. While such an experience suggests that the defaults were well chosen, it also suggests that the wizard wasn't really necessary because all the choices are optional.

In terms of visuals and text, pare down these elements to the bare essentials. Resist the urge to bundle up multiple sub-tasks on a single page (the "burrito wizard") or to resort to tabs for presenting complex input requirements. A single page should cover a single sub-task of the overall task of the wizard.

In most cases, maintain the size of each page throughout the wizard to foster a consistent look and feel. Although Windows wizards allow for resizable pages so that the size of a page matches the amount of content, only a few make use of this option.

And finally, maintain structural elements of each wizard page through the sequence. For example, don't move the Back button from the upper-left corner back down into the commit buttons area for a page or two. This level of layout consistency helps users feel stable within the wizard. Think of this as a baseline for the visual integrity of a page.

One culprit in this excess is redundancy. Because of templates used in early wizard design, the same language might appear in multiple locations on a page, such as in the title bar, headings, body text, control labels, and so on.

It's worth it to hire a professional editor to prune your wizard text ruthlessly. Eliminate unnecessary questions and options on individual pages, and eliminate entire pages from the wizard as a whole (for example, the traditional Welcome and Congratulations pages). Get right to the point of the page with a concisely written main instruction, using language your target audience uses to describe the task, not the jargon of the technology or feature that you or your team uses internally. This user-centric approach is vital to improving the communication of your program's wizards.

Pay special attention to the tone of your wizard: sometimes the most lasting impressions of your program are the result not of what you say but how you say it! In wizards, users are comfortable with a friendly, conversational tone, with liberal use of the second-person pronoun ("you") when the program is asking for input. For more guidelines, see Style and Tone.

Reducing word count on the wizard page is generally commendable, but be careful not to go too far. If the task is important and warrants a wizard, users do appreciate having enough information to make wise choices. The following example shows how wizard text can be condensed without sacrificing meaning. 006ab0faaa