Stability, Continuity
Why these Principles? | (Perceived) Stability | Continuity | How You Can Apply these Principles
These principles help to provide users with a stable and familiar working environment, and also to provide an impression of "continuity" when navigating through an application.
Why these Principles?
A familiar and stable working environment keeps user oriented within an application, and reduces the application's visual and perceived structural complexity. In the end, these measures increase efficiency because users do not get disoriented – which might result in floundering, dead ends with frequent backups, or even breakdowns.
These principles can also be extended across several applications.
(Perceived) Stability
Stability provides simplicity with respect to the user interface because a uniform and stable interface is less complex. Therefore, it reduces working memory load and increases familiarity with the application.
The term "perceived" indicates that stability, in this context, is a psychological, not a technical issue. What counts is what users experience as stable, not which technical interface elements are stable. For example, presenting different views in a tabstrip provides psychologically a more stable environment to users than screen changes, even though the information being presented may be (almost) identical.
Continuity
Continuity refers to the users' experience when they navigate through an application. Users feel more comfortable when the environment changes gradually. Dramatic changes can lead to uneasy feelings and even loss of orientation.
How You Can Apply these Principles
In summary, you can apply these principles by doing the following:
- Make the environment, that is, the overall look and feel of your application, uniform with no drastic or unexpected changes.
- Make the presentation of interface elements, functionality, and data uniform with no drastic or unexpected changes.
- Note: The "global" stability may be more important than the "local" or fine-grained stability.
Source: Simplifying for Usability