Irresistible Apps: Motivational Design Patterns for Apps, Games, and Web-based Communities

Chapter     6

Interface Patterns

Interface patterns are patterns that address how the interface communicates to the user and how the user can affect that communication. Interfaces in irresistible apps praise us, so that we know we’re doing the right thing; they offer up predictable results, so we know what’s going to happen when we click a button; and they let us undo things when we decide we don’t like the results.

Interface patterns are the reason we find ourselves irresistibly drawn to our smartphones, idly flicking around icons and tapping at the screen. Every time we poke at a little green pig on the screen and it giggles, or we tap on a showerhead at random to see if it would do something—and then finding out it does—the interface praises ...