Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Break Conventions

Good design is design that works. This seems like an obvious point, and yet people often confuse good design with design that follows its host system’s UI guidelines, or design that is consistent with other, similar products, or design that follows some other convention.

When in doubt, following conventions is a good idea. Conventions are there for a reason. Google invested a lot in its material design spec, for example, and you could do a lot worse than follow its lead.

But it’s possible that you could also do a lot better.

Your product’s users don’t care if you follow the material design spec, or if you read Apple’s human interface guidelines (HIG). They care whether your product works for them.

If you think that following ...