6.8 Make things differently

When regarding interfaces, always ask yourself: Are these elements important? How is the information used? Can we present it in a more useful way? With an independent project, you have the chance to try out different interaction concepts and interface designs than in widespread or proprietary projects. When not many people use the software yet, you can experiment with designs and test if they are more usable than the current standard patterns. The latter might only be considered usable because they are familiar (Raskin, 1994). A good example is the Chromium browser, which innovated against its already very widespread competitor Firefox. The Chromium developers removed the menu bar and replaced it with one wrench icon which reveals the menu. Mozilla’s Faaborg (2010b) then did research on menu item usage, following Firefox having a similarly condensed menu. Strive to have a better design than other products, especially proprietary alternatives. Don’t just imitate their designs and replicate their mistakes (Nichols & Twidale, 2003; Thomas, 2008).