Dlod

The design rules we adopt usually come from the experiences of other designers we respect, revelationary experiences that have helped us in our work, a reaction against bad practices or ways of thinking that ring true to how we think about and execute design.

But in trying to turn these experiences into practical rules we can use to help our work we sometimes focus on the rules at the expense of what we’re trying to achieve. An excellent example of this is consistency. Anyone who has been flummoxed (or watched users become flummoxed in testing) by links that change style, menus that move around or any other factor that changes just when we think we have figured out how an interface works knows that consistency is vital in making something useable.

But the consistency rule can (and often does) take on a life of it’s own. Once a way of doing something is set it often becomes mandatory that this is consistently implemented across a system. But if in a specific context on that system the usability improves if that consistency is broken, then we are short changing ourselves if we carry on for consistencies sake. We’ve lost sight of the fact that consistency in this case is a way to enhance the usability of a system, it is not a goal in itself.

I’m sure this all seems blindingly obvious, in fact I initially questioned if it was even worth blogging about. But despite the seemingly obvious nature of how to use rules when we are designing I constantly come across designers defining good design with absolutist words like ‘never’ and ‘always’.

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Graphic Design, Interactive Design, User Experience

Posted: March 23rd 2010