POP UX

I just finished reading ‘Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design‘ by Jenifer Tidwell. For the highlight of the book is the common human behavioral patterns which makers (programmer, designers) of application should take into consideration when designing their product. Following are the behavioral patterns outlined in J. Tidwell’s book:

* Safe-exploration – ‘Let me explore without getting lost or getting into trouble.”
* Instant gratification – ‘I want to accomplish something now, not later.’
* Satisficing (combination of satisfying & sufficing) - “This is good enough. I don’t want to spend more time learning to do it better.”
- people are willing to accept ‘good enough’ instead of best if learning all the alternative might cost time and effort
* Changes in midstream – ‘I changed my mind about what I was doing.’
- interruptions in the middle of the task
* Deferred choices - ‘I don’t want to answer that now, just let me finish.’
* Incremental construction - ‘Let me change this. That doesn’t look right; let me change it again. That’s better.’
- feedback is critical. constantly show the user what the whole things looks & behaves like what the user works.
* Habituation - ‘That gesture works everywhere; why does not it work here, too?’
- that’s why consistency across application is important
* Spatial memory - ‘I swear that button was here a minute ago. Where did it go?’
– when people arrange things themselves, they’re likely to remember where they put them.
* Prospective Memory - ‘I’m putting this here to remind myself to deal with it later.’
* Streamlined Repetition – ‘I have to repeat this how many times?’
* Keyboard Only - ‘Please don’t make me use the mouse.’
* Other people’s advice – ‘What did everyone else say about this?’

These are common behavioral patterns which actually just not happen when people are learning a new application. In any new gadget, people always work around the above behaviors when exploring a gadget.

The design patterns then presented by Tidwell are designed based on these common human behaviors when interacting with software applications. There are probably a lot of human patterns to be discovered. It will be interesting to know if there are changes on how people explore applications since people are now more exposed to the internet technology.