Mobile Design Pattern Gallery

Chapter 10. Anti-Patterns

Anti-Patterns: Novel Notions, Metaphor Mismatch, Idiot Boxes, Chart Junk, Oceans of Buttons

What are anti-patterns? Wikipedia defines them as:

Anti-patterns, also called pitfalls, are classes of commonly-reinvented bad solutions to problems. They are studied as a category so they can be avoided in the future, and so instances of them may be recognized when investigating non-working systems. The term originates in computer science, apparently inspired by the Gang of Four’s book Design Patterns, which displayed examples of high-quality programming methods.

—Wikipedia, Anti-Pattern.

Like the software anti-pattern counterparts, the following design anti-patterns are common pitfalls to avoid.

Novel Notions Anti-Pattern

Novel designs are intended to be new, edgy, creative, and innovative. But most of the time they’re just bad, hard to understand, and harder to use. Richard Gunther, creator of the BUI* Gallery, explains it as: “You can usually tell when a mobile app development team comes from an old web development background. They often attempt to translate old user interaction models to the new platform and assert their “creativity” by introducing non-standard UI elements.”

Novel Notions can be found anywhere in an application, from primary navigation down to an individual control, interaction, or gesture. Weight Watcher’s has a number of Novel Notions in their application, ...