Advisory
Design best practice isn't what you think
A pattern that works on one product can be the wrong choice on yours. Best practice is a starting point, not an answer.
Realm Digital
3 min read
Best practice sounds safe. Someone else solved this, they wrote down what worked, and you copy it. The trouble is that the write-up rarely carries the context that made it work. A layout, a flow or a component earns its place because of a particular product, a particular set of users and a particular thing those users are trying to do. Move it somewhere else and the reasons may not follow.
So the honest answer to what makes for good design is uncomfortable. It depends. It depends on who the users are, what they already know, what they are trying to get done and what the business needs them to do. A checkout pattern that suits a marketplace can slow down a booking tool. A dashboard that works for analysts can overwhelm a first-time user. The pattern is not wrong in general. It is wrong here.
Start from the problem, not the pattern
Good design starts with the specific problem and the people who have it. Before we reach for a known solution we want to understand the task, the constraints and the point at which users get stuck today. That understanding is what tells us whether a convention helps or gets in the way.
Conventions matter, and we use them. A familiar navigation pattern, a form that behaves the way people expect, a control that looks like the thing it does. These lower the effort of using a product and there is no prize for making users relearn what they already know. We borrow them where they help. We ignore them where they do not, and we can say why in each case.
This is the difference between design as decoration and design as the way something works. The look of an interface matters, but it is the smaller part. Whether someone can find what they need, understand what they are seeing and complete the thing they came to do, that is the work. When it is done well it goes unnoticed, which is exactly the point.
Borrow deliberately, and know why
Not everything you can build is worth building, and not every established pattern is worth copying. Established systems such as Material Design exist because a lot of research and testing sits behind them, and they are a sound starting point for much of our work. We treat them as a starting point rather than a rule. Where a guideline serves the user we follow it. Where the specific problem asks for something different we design it, and the decision is deliberate rather than a default.
With more than two decades of building digital products, we have learnt that the most useful question is not what does best practice say. It is what does this user, on this product, actually need. Answer that first, then borrow the conventions that help you get there. That is the version of best practice worth having.
