Standards

There is a perennial debate among interaction designers about how closely to follow interface standards and when to break them. Do all applications have to work in a similar way? Should Ctrl-C or Command-C always copy whatever is selected? Does every menu bar have to have the same headings (File, Edit, View, and so on)? Both Microsoft and Apple have standards guidelines that can be downloaded online and are religiously followed by many. Usability gurus such as Jakob Nielsen promote and swear by them.

There are certainly good reasons for having and using standards. Over many years, designers have trained users to expect certain items to be located in certain places (the company logo goes at the top left of a Web site) and certain features to work in a particular way (pressing Ctrl-Z undoes the last command). A design that ignores these standards means that your users will have to learn something different, something that doesn't work like all their other applications work. A deviation from the standard can cause frustration and annoyance.

So why ever violate or alter standards?

For my money, interaction design guru Alan Cooper solved this dilemma with his axiom: Obey standards unless there is a truly superior alternative. That is, ignore standards only when a new layout or feature is markedly, significantly better than what the users have previously used. Feel free to propose a new method of cutting and pasting, but it had better be unequivocally better than what users are accustomed to now, creating a new standard. New standards don't have to be radical departures from the old standards, but even a slight change to them should be made with care.