Title: User Experience And Common Sense
Context: If UX were easy, everyone would be doing it. *Sees everyone doing it* OK, if UX were easy, everyone would be doing it well.
Synopsis: Of course, the primary call to action should be the most obvious item on the UI. Duh. Nobody would intentionally require a user to scroll if it was unnecessary. Jeez. It’s only common sense that the 3rd step in a data transaction flow should use client-side validation instead of server-side to prevent bandwidth leakage and avoid potential asynchronous conflicts later on. What is this, amateur hour? There is a sliding scale of intuitive user experience design patterns that we as designers did not come by easily. Sure, now certain things seem clear, but let us not forget a time when the library of boilerplate design patterns was slim pickings. The longer our profession stays at it, more of this stuff will become stock, until things evolve and then they won’t be any longer. Technology changes, user expectations change, and we designers will always need to change as well. Being a designer isn’t demonstrating mastery of the UX canon, it is the ability to understand what works under what conditions and when to ignore what came before as requirements dictate. If this weren’t the case, the first person to invent the wheel never would have, and how many countless designers would have lost the eternal opportunity to reinvent it?
Best Bit: “Reducing [UX] to ‘common sense’ undermines the work of centuries, and threatens to undo hard-won efforts to win UX a place in the boardroom.”
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