Style Guides


The partnership of designer Shelley Evenson and scientist John Rheinfrank at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1980s yielded some important ideas about visual communications. They created a consistent visual vocabulary, called a "visual design language," for all Xerox photocopiers: green for originals, blue for supplies, red for service areas. Similar nontextual cues are very useful in high-cognitive-friction interfaces, and they are communicated in a "style guide," a book of examples and use suggestions.

Many software engineers and development managers who are frustrated by user-interaction problems would love to have a style guide that tells them what interface their product needs. Many corporations have developed interface style guides for all of their internal software, and several software vendors have them for independent vendors who write compatible software.

Although style guides can help, they really don't address Goal-Directed interaction design problems. These need to be treated on a case-by-case basis. Users with different goals use the various applications, and each product's interaction must address the appropriate goals. A common visual language and consistent controls can help, but they alone don't solve the problem.

Conflict of Interest

If Bill Gates publicly demanded that all vendors other than Microsoft stop innovating in interaction design, those vendors would hoot him from the stage. Yet, Microsoft's interface style guide does just that, and it is one of the company's most potent competitive levers in the industry.

Both Microsoft and Apple sell interface style guides and promote their power and usefulness, and at first glance those companies would seem to be the most authoritative sources. However, the platform vendor is in a vicious conflict of interest, and its motivations cannot really be trusted.

Both platform makers use a quiet form of coercion to ensure compliance. If an independent software developer doesn't follow the style guide's recommendations, the vendor won't let the developer claim to be "platform compliant," an important marketing position. Thus, most makers of desktop software are eager to follow their vendors' recommendations.

By insisting that their independent developer communities follow the stated guidelines, however, these companies surreptitiously suppress innovation from the application community.

Meanwhile the platform vendors are free to experiment, evolve, and innovate as much as they desire. They are under no compulsion to follow their own style guides. Of course, no company more flagrantly and frequently violates those guidebooks than Microsoft and Apple.

I'm not advocating that we ignore style guides and give in to interface chaos. I'm merely saying that we should regard the style guide in the way a senator regards a lobbyist, not in the way a motorist obeys a state trooper. The legislator knows that the lobbyist has an axe to grind that the lobbyist is not a disinterested third party.



Inmates Are Running the Asylum, The. Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy &How to Restore the Sanity - 2004 publication
ISBN: B0036HJY9M
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 170

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