On one hand, we have familiar patterns... which are "easy" because we know them already. I'm sure that to cavemen, a rock was a perfect hammer. It worked, so no need to question it. I doubt they had focus groups to determine if a new shape of rock was better; they just used the rock and pounded stuff, and that was the end of it. But now, we have modern hammers, or better yet, nailguns. More efficient, more exact, and oh yeah, more complicated! So who decided that these new implements would be more useful? Someone had to say "Well, initially this might be a little foreign to hammer-users everywhere, but they'll get used to it; and when they do, it'll be the new standard."

On the other hand, we have new patterns. We are entering a new era in the web with RIA's, media-rich sites, and other entities becoming more robust than ever. With new features comes new interactions- ones that blue hyperlinks can't solve! We, as designers, can do all we can to make these interactions easy and intuitive, but they'll still be initially foreign. So, this begs the question: At what point is a new, and probably foreign, pattern deemed "usable".

I've always thought it a bit corny to use quotes, but this one really sums it up. George Bernard Shaw, I believe... "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."






Ty Lettau
Senior Interactive Designer, XD