Rhythm in Interaction Design

Ever do a repetitive action involving a keyboard and more than two keys? I just did while programming something. And while it's nice to say we should just find ways to automate repetitive tasks, sometimes that's undesirable or unworkable. Think of where gaming would be if you didn't press buttons over and over, jumping over barrels or shooting at aliens.

In a repetitive situation, it's easy to make mistakes unless you get into a rhythm, a pattern of doing it. When you find yourself designing something that out of necessity needs to be repetitive, try it yourself and see if you can fall into a rhythm of doing it. Click on the key sequences in a pattern for a few minutes. If you can't find a comfortable rhythm, your users probably won't be able to either. Thus, their task will be error prone and you need to redesign.

Originally posted at Tuesday, October 26, 2004 | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)