Interface Design Manifesto

There is an article in "Customer Loyalty and experience design in e-business"  Design Management Review by Karl Long that really nails what good interface design is all about I think. It all comes down to these four items:

• Trust
• Competence
• Autonomy
• Enjoyment

Basically trust is the cornerstone of the developing customer loyalty. IMHO Google exemplifies this in a great way. Yahoo does too to a certain extent. There isn't anything invasive in their online products yet they are functional enough to allow to get done what I want to do.

Competence is the concept that that a website should make the user feel competent. Sites that are cluttered with ads and headlines of 'quasi' news erode that actually. Most marketers don't really get it yet that more is not always better. Also if things are to difficult to use that can really erode a users feelings of being competent.

Tying into this competence concept is the idea of autonomy. In other words the ability to allow the user to control their own destiny. Many times we as developers feel the need to handhold the user through a particular process. By allowing the user to learn the interface (as long as it is easy to learn) you give them the sense that they are controlling what the outcome is thus making them feel empowered.

This dovetails nicely into the final concept of enjoyment. The interface should be explorable and learnable to an extent that the user enjoys interacting with it.

These concepts are going to form the basis of what I do from here on out in as much as I have time to do them. I think by adhering to these guidelines and keeping things simple really useful web systems can be developed.