06 Mar 2008 0711H

The importance of convention

A coworker said yesterday, someday I’d like to write a book on Defying Convention. Well, the problem is that the book was written and it was the irrational exuberance of the dotcom era, Web 1.0, which for all of its innovation, was, I feel, ultimately a search for convention, a search for standards. People defy convention everyday, and pay the price in terms of making things difficult to use, find, learn, etc.

We’re in user experience. Convention is not meant to be a stranglehold on innovation: it’s just so people can get things done easily. When convention gets in the way of making things easier to do or use, or becomes kneejerk design conservatism, that’s when we reject convention and question authority.

Call me a conservative, but I tend to hew to convention for public releases and prefer to test our innovations until they’re ready for public release behind closed doors. 

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Filed under Interaction Design, User Experience

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