Spool discusses Design Patterns and promises Data

Jared Spool, founder of User Interface Engineering (UIE), in his first public presentation in London, suggested that the HCI equivalent of the Human Genome Project would be the compilation of the ultimate design patterns book, giving patterns for designs that lead to specific behaviours.

He said the thought came to him when fellow usability guru Ben Schneiderman asked him what the equivalent might be.

'Turns out that if you look at the history of how bridges were built, there were such books,' he said. He added that, as in bridge building, some day we may have equations, 'though I'm not sure human behaviour lends itself to equations like gravity does.'

Jared had likened the present state of usability testing to building a complete bridge, driving a car along it and noticing it fall off. He is critical of the absence of information available to design with.

In a bid to promote greater understanding of user behaviour, more than a hundred hours of raw data from what UIE calls 'compelled shopping analysis' studies will be made available to the research community at large once personal identifiers have been stripped out.

Visit the related UN news story: 'Back' Button and Search are Kiss of Death to Ecommerce, says Spool.

Associated Link: User Interface Engineering

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