Ambivalence is the price of innovation
At a recent professional gathering, our speaker disparaged the "best practices" argument because, as professionals, we should advise to aim for something better than what everyone else is doing. "Best practices" is the entry fee. Innovation is the goal. I understand her point, but there are instances (particularly amidst the group of interface and application designers and developers she was speaking to), when "best practices" do indeed have an important role in building a company's brand.
When a Best Practice Isn't Enough
In the late 19th century, Alexander Graham Bell offered to sell his telephone patent to Western Union for $100,000. They refused, believing the telephone to be a novelty — a kids toy — and focused on more "practical" pursuits such as multiplexing telegraph lines. Two years later, they would have paid $25 million for Bell’s patent.
At the time, Western Union — and everyone else for that matter — knew so completely that the infrastructure did not support everyone having a telephone line run to their home, that they could not imagine the potential for Bell's device.
Buying into such unproven technology was not a "best practice," and as a result, they missed out on a huge opportunity -- perhaps THE opportunity of the century.
When a Best Practice Is a Best Practice
Graphical user interfaces built for the public — in websites or applications — present a challenge not unlike Western Union's, because of the need for differentiation, each one has unique properties.
Since normally the user is seeking the content he hopes to get on your site and because he visits a lot of sites, he doesn't want to learn a brand new interface each time. That would take too long to be useful.
The challenge, then, is to give each user something that is familiar without being ordinary. That is where "best practices" prove their utility and how good interface designers earn their money.
Many times decision-makers at companies charged with shepherding the website redesign process favor glitz and pizazz in the interface in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors. However, their efforts would often be better spent developing either a useful, usable utility or unique and useful content within an interface that makes the content easy to access, transport, and share. - Cam Beck
Comments