A graphical user interface has a lot of advantages over its predecessors. Its beauty, simplicity, adaptability, user-friendliness, visual clarity, speed and ease of operation have made it popular and suitable to a broad range of users.

But a GUI also has certain limitations. Like any other type of user interface, a GUI can also be operated wrongly which may yield undesirable results. A good GUI should be intelligent to determine user’s intention and disallow him doing wrong operations. A less error-prone GUI is certainly more effective and efficient.

Ideally the GUI should prevent users from doing any mistake while operating the GUI. A better GUI would intelligently detect and automatically correct all wrong operations done by the user (Ideal Final Result).

The article analyzes the features of an ideal GUI, finds out the contradictions in achieving the ideal features and illustrates alternative methods of solving the contradictions. Seven patents are analyzed from US patent database illustrating how each of them tries to reduce operational errors in a GUI.

Although a GUI is a revolutionary development over its predecessors, it suffers from a typical shortcoming that it requires a lot of pointer movements. As pointer movement is a slow process it affects the overall performance of a GUI operation. Besides too much pointer movement can frustrate a user. Hence, it is desirable to reduce the pointer movements while performing any action through a typical GUI.

Ideally the user need not move the pointer to initiate a GUI based operation. In other words the pointer itself should automatically move onto the desired location on the graphical user interface (Ideal Final Result).

This article analyzes the problems involved in pointer movements, finds out the specific GUI activities that demands more pointer movements and suggests specific methods that can reduce pointer movements. The methods include reducing the distance to access the remote menu items, automating the process of resizing and relocating windows and toolboxes, bringing the desired menu or command near to the cursor location instead of needing the cursor to move to the menu or command location.

The modern software tools provide numerous graphic elements in their GUI, which demand more and more screen space. As the size of a display screen cannot be extended beyond a limit, it is typically seen as a constraint in a graphical user interface.

Looking from a TRIZ perspective, the computer screen should display all the information that the user needs (Ideal Final Result). There are various methods of addressing the problem of screen space, some of which are, ”using icons for windows”, “the desktop metaphor”, “the large virtual workspace metaphor”, “multiple virtual workspaces”, “overlapping windows” and “increasing dimensions” etc.

There are many inventions on how to maximize the presentation of information on a graphical user interface. This article analyzes nine inventions from US Patent database from a TRIZ perspective illustrating how they solve the contradictions in order to achieve the desired result.

A GUI is intended for the end user but designed by the developer. Even the experienced developer cannot realistically anticipate what options will be required by the users at a future point of time. Besides, even a well-designed GUI may not be felt convenient to all categories of users as the skill, expertise and requirement of the users vary from each other.

Although the user can best describe his requirement and therefore can best configure the GUI, it is not advisable for the user to spend time and effort to configure the GUI. The user interface needs to be customized for the user but the user should not bother doing the job. This creates a contradiction.

This contradiction is solved by the concept of automatic configuration. In auto-configurable GUI, the elements and features of GUI are automatically configured to meet the requirement of the user. This article analyses eight inventions from US patent database relating to automatic configuration of GUI. The article illustrates how each invention solves different problems involved in automatic configuration and analyzes each solution process using TRIZ methods and principles.

The graphic user interface is a revolutionary development over the prior art technique of the command line interface. Using GUI the user can do even complex operations through simple means like clicking buttons or dragging various graphic elements.

Ideally the GUI should contain all those buttons (or menu items or other GUI elements) and only those buttons (or menu items or other GUI elements) that the user needs. Besides the GUI elements should not obscure the display of data, should take no time for searching and should create no confusion in any level of user.

Generally the GUI elements are all pre-coded and built into the system by the developer. Even the experienced developer cannot realistically anticipate what options will be required by the users at a future point of time. As it is ultimately the user who knows his requirement, it is better that the user himself configures the GUI according to his requirement.

The article discusses the problems involved in implementing user-configurability and illustrates twelve inventions from US Patent database on the same issue. Each invention is analyzed from a TRIZ perspective to illustrate the contradictions, Ideal Final Result and Inventive Principles.