A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about better IA where I listed a few things I’m a big advocate of and which I belive makes for better IA.
One of my points was..
…how the little details and consistency in design can make all the difference to the quaility of the end result and to the experience
I’ve fought many battles over this matter. Some lost, some won. The lost ones are a real bugbear of mine and I continously work to get people to see that the seemingly unimportant nitty gritty details, are at times the most important ones. The make or breakers.
It’s these that make up the whole of an experience. That have the potential to leave you sitting their smiling saying “That was nice.”, sincerely meaning ever word of it. Just like after a delicious meal, or a good glass of wine. It’s where you have a chance to bring in the unexpected, to wow the user, make them feel special and taken care of. Where the ease of use ratio hits the jackpot and where barriers to entry dissappear. Where registering, signing up or completing any type of otherwise boring form or task turns into something rather pleasureable. Perhaps even fun.
It’s not where the date selector, for a site that asks you to be over 18 years of age, is sorted highest to lowest and defaults to year 2010.
Or where tabbing through a form doesn’t follow the same order of which you’re supposed to fill it in, but randomly leaves you in a different field resulting in you entring the wrong information.
Or where the whole form that you’ve filled in clears just because your password format was incorrect.
Or where a travel booking site’s calendar functionality fails to dynamically update the return date selector to the same month that you’ve chosen as a departure but keeps it at today’s month.
No, it’s where little, clever things are implemented which help the user, make the site or app seem intelligent and where you can see that a consious decision is behind every aspect of the design.
If you come across any of these type of experiences I’d love to get the link to them. For some inspiration see the Little Big Details blog. There is also a lovely example of a password strenght indicator on this blog post from We Love which not only shows you how weak/strong your password is but gives you advice on what to include to make it stronger. More attention to the detail like this please.
