Comments on: UIEtips: Rabbis, Tropes, and Visually Consistent Designs http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2010/10/20/uietips-consistent-designs/ UIE\'s latest insights on the world of design Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:13:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 By: David Rondeau http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2010/10/20/uietips-consistent-designs/comment-page-1/#comment-153431 David Rondeau Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:12:31 +0000 http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/?p=2708#comment-153431 What I like most about this article is that it pushes designers to think about patterns as more than just "widgets". Yes, it does talk a lot about color and typography, but you can expand the scope of the trope and expand the idea of pattern to also include structure and interaction methods. The places in the system, the organization of content and controls on a screen, and the ways we interact with them are also patterns that need to meet user's expectations. If these patterns match how people are used to doing similar tasks (whether online or not), the interface is easier to use. If they don't match, things become difficult. I think there are many interaction design tropes that are already well established; the problem is that we're only tacitly aware of them and we don't often recognize or acknowledge them. This is something I've been working on and thinking about for a while, so I'd be curious to know if others are explicitly using higher-level tropes or patterns. Thanks for the thought provoking content. -dave What I like most about this article is that it pushes designers to think about patterns as more than just “widgets”. Yes, it does talk a lot about color and typography, but you can expand the scope of the trope and expand the idea of pattern to also include structure and interaction methods. The places in the system, the organization of content and controls on a screen, and the ways we interact with them are also patterns that need to meet user’s expectations. If these patterns match how people are used to doing similar tasks (whether online or not), the interface is easier to use. If they don’t match, things become difficult.

I think there are many interaction design tropes that are already well established; the problem is that we’re only tacitly aware of them and we don’t often recognize or acknowledge them. This is something I’ve been working on and thinking about for a while, so I’d be curious to know if others are explicitly using higher-level tropes or patterns.

Thanks for the thought provoking content.
-dave

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