Two interesting items that advocate consistency in web design:
Merholz has been going through Henry Dreyfuss' 1955 book Designing for People. The book, written by a noted industrial designer, has a number of good lessons for designers of all stripes. Dreyfuss lists some really nifty examples in the aforementioned chapter 4. Read the post and pay attention to the image of the book. Merholz pulled out the key concept: "At the expense of forfeiting originality, and it is a great temptation to hide locks and access panels, we try to make things obvious to operate, not only in airplane interiors, but in everything we do." Hmm...lets hope web designers take some of these (50 year-old) lessons to heart.
Meanwhile, Herasimchuk makes a similar point in his article. He uses the MovableType interface as an example, pointing out eight different UI conventions. While the MT interface is neither the best nor the worst interface I've seen, eight button/link styles does seem excessive. Again, the solution is consistency and simplicity.
Posted by Karl
January 29, 2004 04:28 PM