I encountered an example recently where a UI Golden Rule was broken to great effect. I promise that the idea of “breaking rules” has nothing to do with my last post that was all about not knowing what the rules are.
So back to the UI Golden Rules – there is no shortage of rules out there that have been concocted and created through a combination of common sense, user studies, and solid media persuasion. I say persuasion because there are no real “UX Golden Rules” that everyone agrees on – design is too subjective for that. I would argue that there are Golden Rules around best practices for gathering information and analysing it, but when it comes to actual design, the rules tend to be more about who has the loudest and most-listened-to voice at the moment. What’s this all mean? It means most designers tend to form their own Golden Rules and work from those. Myself I tend to model my thinking along the lines of Ben Shneiderman‘s 8 Golden Rules. But this post is about breaking rules for the betterment of design – let me tell you a story.