What are the three great laws of interaction design?

Asimov, a sci-fi writer, created the "Three Principles of robotics" in his series of robot stories. These laws are permanently implanted into every robot as the last insurance against disaster and protecting humanity. I'm curious, what's our last insurance? What are the three rules for interactive designers?

The user's perception of the interface can not be separated from its form, content and behavior. As industry and graphic designers focus on the form, interaction designers consider behavior as the most important element. To design and control the user's experience, we must first consider our three laws, how the interface behaves and how it affects the user's behavior. They have to be a solid foundation on which to build other interactive design principles. Luckily, the three laws I'm going to use have already been put forward-the master of the Three laws, the brain behind the Mac program, the Jef Raskin. He wrote down the three Iron laws on a page of his book The Humane Interface, a book that is close to the Bible in interactive design. By reading carefully, you will find that the most popular user interface in modern times uses the concepts and techniques of this landmark book, including Microsoft and Apple devices.

　First Law

By using Asimov's Three Laws, Raskin wrote, "the first rule of interaction design should be that computers should not interfere with your work or cause damage to your work because of omission" [1]. We should all bear in mind that computers are a tool for accomplishing tasks, and that the ultimate goal is to use the software itself in the unlikely or rare circumstances. Therefore, we can agree that the worst experience on the computer is to let the work suffer. The only one by one things worse than losing a completed job is the loss of data that cannot be accurately restored, such as the work of creative classes.

When you type, the application should truthfully reflect the data and prevent you from losing your job as much as possible. You might think this is just an engineer's concern. Developers should ensure that their software has safeguards and redundancy to prevent data loss (and some potential bugs), right? In fact, data protection and job preservation are also the tasks of interface design, as designers must act beforehand-through user research-to discover how users lose their jobs or have to repeat their work. This means adding some protection, such as powerful undo functionality and destructive operational protection, to prevent unintentional data loss. An excellent example is the GitHub Warehouse Delete dialog box, which does work, unlike other confirmation dialogs, which force you to enter the warehouse name to continue. This technique is smart, forcing the user to focus on the warehouse name during the deletion process. Security measures prevent users from habitual operation resulting in loss.

GitHub Delete Confirmation dialog box.

The first rule also applies to saving the user's work-related and content itself. For example, it takes a lot of effort to select a series of items to operate (such as files). Therefore, it is recommended that you keep the selected state in your workflow and keep them in a list of actions that can be undone. Similarly, if the interface allows the user to customize or sort the elements, these sorts or customizations should be saved.

Why is Apple's time machine and AutoSave, and Dropbox's historical version so great, because it follows the first "rule". They acknowledge the fact that human beings make mistakes, although it is not their intention that users may trigger an operation that destroys work or data.

Apple's "Browse all Versions" feature is great.

　　Second Law

Raskin continued, "a good second law should be" computers should not waste time, or require you to do non-essential work "[2]. It is common for users to take on many tasks because it is much simpler to perform a task manually than to write a system to automate it. In these cases, if the technology permits, the computer should take up these jobs. such as forcing the user to choose the type of credit card, although it can be inferred from the card number.

Stripe is right, automatically detects the type of credit card.

Users learn a new set of interface or system data models, taking into account the time and effort needed to balance the total workload. Performing an operation in a less efficient manner may be less work than learning an efficient new way of doing it. Users only intended to interact with a small number of interfaces. As for others, it may be worthwhile to sacrifice efficiency in exchange for more intuitive operations.

Assume that you need to be cautious in situations where you have to force users to change their own thinking patterns. Because this design decision affects the user's content structure (usually out of technical requirements) rather than letting them decide how to organize the information themselves or use the familiar structure. An excellent interface displays information systems in the most understandable form that users want. Take, for example, the way most banks want you to save. Usually, you need to keep your money in several accounts, or have an account, and then decide which ones you don't want to spend. Simple uses a different scheme. Rather than forcing a user to think about how a deposit works (for example, in a bank account), simple allows you to simply set any amount of money by "purpose", which, along with subsequent transactions, is tracked by the "available" balance.

Simple "available" can be used to identify the exact way people spend their money.

　The Third law

I believe that all the remainder of Raskin's book is about the third law. He said that the interface should be humanitarian, that it should "respond to human needs and be considerate of human weaknesses" [3]. This is the core law of the whole user-centric design, thus obtaining other interactive design principles. Good interaction design always respects the limitations of the human brain and the body. It is necessary to remain sensitive to our instinctive physical reactions and cultural values.

One example of how the interface becomes humanitarian is the design that surrounds people with only one thing to look at at the same time. For example, the keyboard caps the LEDs on the lock key. It is not a good solution in itself, and it is not possible to avoid the false touch opening CAPS LOCK mode, because when the user presses, the focus is usually not on the button. Mac's password input is handled very well, it provides a visual indication in the input box that the CAPS lock is turned on and the user is looking at the input box at this time.

Caps locked information is where you need it.

An example of "Responding to user needs" is to continually show what users care about when they are operating or executing a workflow (note: They are concerned with the purpose, not your application). Look at Amazon, which automatically shows whether the footage you're looking at matches the camera you bought recently.

Amazon's camera lens matching component.

The last "law" is the essence of the law of interaction design. In today's world, it is important to know the design interface is humanitarian, from the cognitive Gestalt principles and graphic design principles to the relevant cultural psychology. Our work is never-ending. As time passes, technology prospects and our cultural environment are slowly changing, and we will bump forward and continue to evolve our design and design processes.

In any case, these three laws are the basic principles of my constant backtracking, and they have repeatedly become the touchstone of successful interfaces. It is helpful to keep in mind the appearance and behavior of your decision-making interface, regardless of the aesthetic style you ultimately design.

Summarize

Computers should not interfere with your work or cause damage to your work because of omission.

Computers should not waste time, or require you to do non-essential work.

The interface should be humanitarian; it should respond to human needs and be considerate of human weaknesses.