UX and the Civilizing Process

In UX, we try to hide the fact that our interfaces are built on top of machines — hunks of metal coursing with electricity, executing strict logic in the face of physical resource constraints.

Alan Cooper — UX pioneer and author of About Face — argues that we should treat our interfaces like people and do what we do best: moralize about their behavior.

Garry Tan calls our attention to a great example of interface hospitality: Chrome’s tab-closing behavior. When you click the ‘x’ to close a tab, the remaining tabs shift or resize so that the next tab’s ‘x’ is right underneath your cursor. This way you can close multiple tabs without moving your mouse.

As a practitioner you need to be perceptive and helpful, yes, but to really distinguish yourself, you also need great taste and a good pulse on the zeitgeist. A designer should know if ‘we’ are doing flat or skeuomorphic design ‘these days,’ just as a diner should know if he should be tucking his napkin into his shirt or holding it on his lap.

A consumer who gets frustrated with a free iPhone app will switch to a competitor without batting an eyelash, but that just can’t happen in the enterprise world. As a rule of thumb, the less patient your users, the better-behaved your app needs to be.

To maintain the absolute highest standards is always costly — one of the reasons manners are an honest signal of wealth.

Apple makes something of a religion about hiding its implementation details. Its hardware is notoriously encapsulated. The iPhone won’t deign to expose even a screw; it’s as close to seamless as manufacturing technology will allow.