Shortly after giving a talk about cognitive function, pattern frameworks and a bit of brain science here at The Barbarian Group I was reminded of the 12 principles of animation as defined in the book The Illusion of Life. The authors, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson, were 2 of the nine old men at Disney animation studios and the book went on to become something of a bible to animation artists, especially the computer animation field that was growing shortly after it’s 1981 release.

My thought regarding those principles was that I had yet to come across a similar set of principles on the topic of interaction design. I did some searching and found plenty of principles, but none like the 12 I’d learned so much about animation from.

Principles that I found were things like “consistency” and “visible”. While these are important things, I don’t find them anything but obvious and yet vague. Something that everyone who has used good design feels but only realizes how to implement after they’ve gained the experience to do it themselves.

I intend to define my own set of principles starting now, a blog post at a time. Principles that not only define the practice of interaction design, but that are actionable by novices and experts alike.

#1. Use patterns and prediction
Every decision a person makes is based on a pattern they have previously experienced and their expectation of the outcome to that decision. Some people call these patterns ‘mental models’ and use them to build ‘scenarios’.

Mental models and scenarios are esoteric ways of saying predict what your users expect and decide how to respond. Break your interaction tasks down and apply this expectation / prediction process one step at a time.

....more to come