Should we innovate new UI patterns?
Imagine yourself in an age before computers. You want to create a product that you want millions of people to use. Not only would you have to go through much labor but the marginal cost of replication is also going to be high for every product you bring to the market.
Fast forward to where you are today. If you want to create a digital product for millions of users, you can do it with a single codebase (assuming that you’re targeting a single platform). The marginal cost of replication is zero yet, the distribution can scale to millions or even more.
Scaling is the goal of the current app economy and growth is the strategy. You want more users to use your app and focus on how fast your user base is growing.
Consistency or innovation?
Innovation is the successful commercialization of an invention. And an invention is something completely novel. Something that doesn’t currently exist in the market. To frame it in our perspective, it is the successful adoption of something new we create as designers and engineers.
During the early days when I was learning design, I thought designing completely new and unique interfaces was a good way to stand out. But as product designers, we also have to focus on the business aspect of a product. At the end of the day, the market dictates the success of a product.
This means making whatever you build needs to satisfy a good market. This is how Marc Andressen defines ‘Product-Market Fit’. On a higher level, how easy a product is to incorporate into our daily lives is the key component. If a product is easy to become a part of our routine and we’re excited to use it, word of mouth will follow. And this is a possible sign of a product achieving PMF.
Innovation comes with a price. For our users, the price is their time and learning. Whenever we create a new interface or pattern, they’ll have to invest their time learning it. How easy is your new design to adapt determines its success.
Factors affecting adoption
If you’re creating a new form of interaction pattern, users will have to learn it. The success of a new design pattern depends on three things. First, how complex the new pattern is. Second, how often do your users get to learn. And finally, how long does it take for your users to learn it.
It is important that a new pattern doesn’t impede the user from achieving the goal while using your product. It is also vital that your users get frequent exposure to learning the new pattern. Needless to say, your new pattern should also be less complex than what your users are already familiar with. And it’s even better if it’s built on top of the concepts they’re already comfortable with.
Our own behaviors are stacked against us
According to BJ Fogg, “People are generally resistant to teaching and training because it requires efforts. This clashes with the natural wiring of human adults: We are fundamentally lazy. As a result, products that require people to learn new things routinely fail.”
Learning needs to be simplified in order to increase the adoption of a product.
Humans are tool builders and we build tools for ourselves. This also implies that whatever we build needs to work for us. How easy it is for us to adapt to a tool is important for the spread and frequency of its usage.
“As the pace of innovation accelerates, human behavior, not technological restraints, will be the deciding factor of whether products are adopted or discarded.” — Nir Eyal.
The sweet spot: familiar done differently
It is easier to build new knowledge and concepts on top of what we’re already familiar with.
For example, when you were learning English in school, your teacher didn’t teach you sentence composition right away. You learned about alphabets, how to form words, and continued your progress to form a sentence.
If you take Tinder, as another example, it uses a common gesture that we’re all familiar with, swiping. Tinder did not introduce a complex pattern in the name of innovating its interface. It distinguished its interface from its competitors but preserved the familiar gesture of swiping.
This is where there is some space for innovation without jeopardizing adoption.
Concluding point
Creating new interfaces and patterns can be costly for both designers, engineers, and users. Inventions are improved solutions to what already exists. Innovation is the successful spread of those solutions.
It is important to keep in mind that we’re still bounded by the app economy (unless you’re creating something as a hobby). The market is ruthless but that should not stop us from innovating. Keeping human factors in mind, doing the familiar differently is the way to innovate.
References
- Wenzel, Meghan. “Do Mental Models Thwart Innovation?” Medium, May 25, 2021. https://uxdesign.cc/do-mental-models-thwart-innovation-88890c821c5b.
- Andreessen, Marc. “Pmarchive · The Only Thing That Matters.” Accessed May 24, 2022. https://fictivekin.github.io/pmarchive-jekyll//guide_to_startups_part4.
- Fogg, BJ. “Behavior Model.” behaviormodel. Accessed May 24, 2022. https://behaviormodel.org/.
- Eyal, Nir. “People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently.” Psychology of Stuff (blog), November 16, 2016. https://medium.com/behavior-design/people-don-t-want-something-truly-new-they-want-the-familiar-done-differently-fef00fcec0ba.
- Watkins, Alan, and Simon May. Innovation Sucks!: Time to Think Differently, 2021.
