1. They ask the absolute minimum of me. For example, a drop-down with three choices should be a radio button list. That’s because the drop-down requires me to click twice and the radio button list only once.

2. They’re fun to figure out, and a tiny bit challenging. The user interface doesn’t have to be so dumb that you literally require 0 thought process to figure it out. If a part of a repetitive form gets used very infrequently, it can be hidden. The user will find it and be happy . Or, if a todo list has a due date for each item, don’t rely on a simple date and time. Try using “today, tomorrow, a week, custom” as a radio button list if the first three choices cover most of the situations. It takes a second to understand that you’re not keying in a date like everywhere else, but the shortcut you learn is more valuable than that second.

3. Incredibly readable font. BIG buttons. HUGE. Associate labels with checkboxes and radio buttons so that I can click on the label and not have to aim at the teeny tiny little box. There’s no shame in huge buttons. If you have so many that you can’t afford to make them huge, then you have too many buttons. If you don’t have a lot of them, then there’s no reason to keep them small (::cough:: I’m looking at you Submit-button-on-this-form).