Leveraging Familiar Features: When "Different" Isn't Always Better in User-Friendly Features

There's a common belief that the path to success involves creating groundbreaking features and mechanisms. While innovation is essential, there's something to be said about sticking to existing, well-known features and borrowing ideas from established apps.

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In this article, I'd like to emphasise the value of this approach and provide specific examples.

The IT industry is known for its continuous evolution and the ceaseless introduction of novel concepts, but there's a hidden gem in revisiting the old. Embracing established features and mechanisms can often provide a smoother user experience, reduce development time, and ultimately improve the overall quality of your software.

One area where this approach is particularly relevant is in the design of navigation bars for websites and applications. Many developers and designers are tempted to create flashy and unique navigation bars, often appearing only when tapped or swiped, with intricate animations and complex interactions. While these can be visually appealing, they may not always serve the user's best interests.

Take, for instance, the practice of using navigation bars that appear upon scrolling. This mechanism is widely used in numerous well-known apps and websites. When a user scrolls up a page, the top navigation bar seamlessly reappears, offering easy access to essential functions. This approach is tried and tested because it aligns with user expectations and habits.

1. User Habit and Expectation: Users have become accustomed to the navigation bars that appear upon scrolling or remain on screen (sticky and fixed nav bars) When they visit a new application or website, having a familiar navigation system helps them navigate effortlessly. It minimises the learning curve and reduces the chances of user frustration.

2. Reduced Cognitive Load: An intuitive navigation bar reduces cognitive load. Users don't have to figure out how to access key features or menus, as they already know where to find them. This can enhance user satisfaction and lead to increased engagement with the software.

3. Quality Assurance Benefits: From a QA engineer's perspective, adopting established navigation patterns simplifies the testing process. You can leverage existing test cases and focus on more critical aspects of the software, such as unique features and functionalities. This can result in a more efficient QA process and higher software quality.

4. Development Time and Resources: Creating a novel navigation system with intricate animations and behaviors can consume a significant amount of development time and resources. In contrast, implementing a well-known mechanism saves both time and costs. Developers can focus on optimising performance, security, and ensuring a seamless user experience.

5. Risk Mitigation: Innovative navigation systems may introduce unexpected issues or usability problems. By using a tried-and-true approach, you reduce the risk of such issues and can prioritise other aspects of software development.

The Familiarity of Drag and Drop: Now let's imagine a widely accepted and user-friendly feature: the drag-and-drop interface for organising files or items in an application. This feature has become a staple in countless applications, celebrated for its intuitiveness and simplicity.

The Urge to Innovate: In an effort to distinguish their application, a development team decides to move away from the conventional drag-and-drop method. They introduce a new mechanism involving a double-click action in one spot to select an item and a double-click in another spot to place it elsewhere. Their rationale is to offer a unique and fresh approach.

The User Experience Dilemma: What the team didn't anticipate was the user backlash. Users accustomed to the familiar drag-and-drop interface found the new system confusing and counterintuitive. The double-click action in two separate spots introduced a learning curve that frustrated users and disrupted their established workflows.

Reduced Efficiency and User Satisfaction: The shift to the new mechanism resulted in reduced user efficiency and satisfaction. What was once a simple, one-step action had morphed into a complex, multi-step process that required users to rethink how they organised their files or items.

User Feedback and Reversion: User feedback poured in, emphasising their frustration and disappointment with the change. The primary concern that resonated from the feedback was that the new approach to transferring files didn't work as intended. Despite the feature being described and the client having prior knowledge of it, users still felt lost and perplexed when attempting to perform file transfers. This confusion further underscored the misalignment between the new mechanism and the users' expectations, prompting the development team to ultimately revert to the original, more intuitive drag-and-drop method.

While the tech industry thrives on innovation, there's immense value in embracing established features and mechanisms, especially when it comes to user interfaces. Users' familiarity, reduced cognitive load, benefits for quality assurance, efficient development, and risk mitigation all make a compelling argument for utilising existing, well-known technologies.

Remember, "old" doesn't always mean "worse."

In many cases, it means tried, tested, and proven to work.

As QA engineers, developers, and designers, we should always consider the user's best interests and strive for a user experience that is both intuitive and efficient. By doing so, we can create software that stands the test of time and exceeds user expectations.