What Shapes Our UIs?

The architecture of any user interface (UI) doesn’t materialise out of thin air. Designers, programmers, and the organisations they work for imbue these interfaces with their own assumptions and beliefs, most often for the worse.

How Do Assumptions Enter the Equation?

From button placement to colour schemes, each element in a UI is a decision. But who makes these decisions? Often, it’s a team working within the context of an organisation’s culture, objectives, and constraints. These factors inevitably influence the assumptions and beliefs that get encoded into the UI.

Conway’s Law and UI Design

Conway’s Law posits that the structure of any system designed by an organisation will mirror the organisation’s communication structure. Similarly, the architecture of a UI can reflect the philosophy and dynamics of the teams and organisation that built it.

What Are the Consequences?

You might think that the personal imprint of a designer or an organisational culture on a UI is trivial. However, these imprints can significantly impact user experience. For example, a complex, hierarchical organisation might produce a UI that’s difficult to navigate. Users could find themselves lost in a maze of options, reflecting the convoluted internal structures of the organisation behind the UI.

Spotting the Pitfalls

Once you’re aware of this, you can begin to see the effects everywhere. You’ll notice that some UIs make assumptions about user behaviour that seem to ignore the diversity of users’ needs and contexts. Others might embed a sales-driven approach so deeply that the user feels more like a target than a valued customer.

Are There Solutions?

The first step in mitigating the effects of these embedded assumptions is awareness. UI designers benefit from cognisance of the influence their background and workplace culture have on their work. User testing and feedback are valuable methods for exposing unintended assumptions. Focused reviews and audits by experts outside of the organisation can also offer fresh perspectives. Engaging an organisational psychotherapist can further help to surface implict assumptions and beliefs.

The Future of UI Design

As we move towards a more inclusive and user-centric approach in UI design, acknowledging the hidden biases and assumptions is crucial. Only then can we create interfaces that serve a broad range of users, rather than just reflecting the narrow viewpoints of their creators.

Postscript

This post has been about UIs. There’s a whole fresh can of worms related to UX and the assumptions and beliefs embedded there.