Question

Often times convention is one of the most important design consideration for user interface. Usually the advice goes to do it like Microsoft does.

This is for three reasons:

1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
2. If your users expect to click on a floppy disk icon to save, don’t change the icon (even though some of them may have never seen an actual floppy disk).
3. Users don’t want to re-learn the interface (and hot keys, etc.) with each different application they use.

At the same time Emmerson said “*A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.*” So when does maintaining a consistent user interface cross the line from a good idea to stagnated innovation?

Microsoft shook up the good old WIMP GUI with the introduction of the tool bar, and then again with the Ribbon control (which is the natural evolution of the tool bar, like it or not.) Now we are seeing ribbons everywhere.

So my question is, what are some user interface paradigms that are accepted and consistent across multiple applications, but have stayed past their prime and are starting to reek? Are there some important changes that would benefit from a grass roots push by developers to innovate and improve the user interface experience for our users?

One thought that came to mind for me is the modal pop-up dialog. You know the ones that say: “Are you sure you want to . . .. – [Yes] [No] [Cancel] [Maybe]” and its evil twin “Successfully completed what you wanted to do! [OK].” We are seeing a movement away from these with the “info panel” in browsers. I think they need to be adopted in windows application development as well.

If possible please list a solution for each stale UI item.

And please don’t list clippy. We all know he was a bad idea.

NOTE: This is specifically Windows client user interface paradigms, but I am certainly open to drawing inspiration from the web, the Mac, etc.

Answer 1

You mentioned popup modal dialogs , and I’d argue that non-modal ones are just as bad. Any dialog box remove focus from the program, they could end up behind the program and make it hard to find it, they might not even appear on the same virtual screen.

I’d like to see an end to all dialog boxes. If you need to stop someone from using the UI because of some non-normal circumstance, then remove the relevant parts of the UI from the window, and replace it with what the dialog would contain. Bring back the UI once the problem has been handled.