101 UX Principles – 2nd edition - Second Edition

#16

Don’t Invent New, Arbitrary Controls

These could be:

• An isometric pseudo-3D wheel to choose the color of your car
• A volume dial that you must click and drag up-and-down to “rotate”
• A button you must click and hold for a few seconds to indicate that you really want to do this action

Just don’t invent them. As designers, we already have a rich palette of existing controls to choose from. If you’re thinking about making a new UI control, please stop and think about how hard it will be for users to learn yet another interface pattern. I promise you this—there’s already a way to do what you want to do.

However, every now and then, something new comes along that is genuinely an advance in UI. Back in 2008, Loren Brichter made a Twitter app ...