Clarity

  
Clarity relies on the conventional and the familiar: icons whose meanings are well-established or at least well understood and easily learned by the expected user population; everyday objects in their habitual places, colors and aspects; text arranged to be read from left to right and from top to bottom. Every departure from convention and habit invites puzzlement (slowing comprehension) or confusion (leading to errors). A clear layout presents an orderly progression of elements. An ideal arrangement leads the eye to focus first on one particular element. Both the order and the hierarchy of the information should be understandable at a glance. A user should be able to understand the organization of the major groupings and their relationships before reading any of the text. Clarity results from
unambiguous beginnings and end points
systematic arrangement and careful alignment of elements
foregrounded objects (buttons, imagemaps, and text) sharply contrasted against the screen's background
predictable placement of elements
unambiguous groupings: grouped elements must be perceived to be near each other and to be isolated from other groupings by a sufficiently large gap or by a strong enough line so that the separation is obvious
visual punctuation: strong markers for major divisions (between information and navigation elements, between body text and secondary information such as version numbers and last modified dates). These markers may involve variations in the size or density (line weight, brightness or darkness) of text or graphics, differential use of color for a span of text or a graphic element, departure from the regular placement and alignment of elements
unambiguous link cues (which graphic elements are linked, in imagemaps which objects or areas are "hot")
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Web Design Guide