Principle of Habit Formation
If a user repeatedly uses an interface, they’re likely to develop a habit for this usage. When designing, you should therefore try and encourage “good” usage rather than bad habits. Additionally, a designer should always remember that they have formed habits themselves that might inform the usage of an interface.
Relevant Terms
Principle of Least Astonishment (POLA)
This principle states that when you’re designing an experience, you need to remember that human beings can only pay full attention to one thing at a time, meaning that you should reduce the amount of new things you introduce at once.
UX Design Principles
Tesler’s Law
Also known as the Waterbed Theory, this is the “law of conservation or complexity”. This theory states that every human-computer interaction will involve some amount of complexity, which can’t be hidden away or cut out entirely.
UX Design Principles
Postel’s Law
This computing theory is a guideline for software design, where ideally you’re being conservative in what you present, but liberal in what you accept from others.
UX Design Principles