Designers dilemma: break new ground or stick to what is conventional

Designers are creative people and constantly looking for innovative ways to improve the user experience.

Jakob Nielsen however states that any deviation from a convention will cause major usability problems.

And thus are designers faced with the dilemma of whether to break new grounds and innovate or stick to what is conventional.

In their paper The effect of violating visual conventions of a website on user performance and disorientation. How bad can it be? Luis Santa-Maria and Mary C. Dyson of the University of Reading investigated what happens to user performance and disorientation when visual conventions are violated.

Twenty-eight participants were randomly allocated to two independent groups: one was tested with a conventional website and the other with a convention-violating website.

Although initially violating visual conventions might hider user performance and leave users disoriented this experiment indicates there experiment indicates that these problems can be short-lived and users can adapt reasonably fast to a new set of visual conventions. So the decision to whether conform or violate visual conventions when designing a website should ponder that although users might adapt quickly to novelty there is an initial performance hindrance and disorientation.

Related posts:

1. Five things website designers can do to direct user attention
2. Guidelines for Describing Usability Problems