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Have you ever noticed Apple is much better at using verbs in the labels of their command buttons than Microsoft? Apple uses the labels “Go Back” and “Continue” in their wizards, where Microsoft would use “Back” and “Next.” I love this. It was one of the first things I noticed when I switched to OS X that made me realize how good Apple is at interaction design.

I don’t remember when or where I learned it, but as a general rule, you want to use verbs in the labels of buttons, menus, and links that perform an action. It seems like common sense, but we see it trumped quite often. The cases where you can make an exception is when the action is so common it’s safe to assume the user doesn’t have to think to understand what’s implied. The most common example is that most buttons and menus that are simply nouns imply “View (the noun).”

I apply the same thing to naming methods and functions when I program. I always try to start the method with a verb. In more verbose languages like Java (and maybe even PHP), I would always start with a verb: getName(), listAttributes(). In less verbose languages like Ruby and Python, it’s common to skip implied verbs like get and set, but for everything else, I start with a verb: publish_all, find_by_name.

Now, there’s a neat thing about good interaction design. You can come up with an interface design that seems great on paper and in theory that simply won’t work in practice. This can happen when the new design is too different from what people are used to. That’s why certain conventions were created, and why it’s a good idea not to trump common conventions. If you want to make a great user interface, you don’t want to make the user figure it out, you want it to be intuitive. That means you should bend your design to accommodate their existing expectations, even if they aren’t for the best design.

What you can get away with depends on the specific type of user you’re designing for. By that I mean, getting away with better theoretical interaction design. More idealistic designs can be achieved by slowly conditioning users though incremental improvements over time. It’s probably a good idea to slightly deviate from bad conventions in the direction of better design.

The convention that sparked all this is using New as a command. File, New has been around in graphical user interfaces for about as long as I can remember, and it’s one of the most used commands because it’s the beginning of most workflows. Unfortunately, New is not a verb. New is an adjective. Therefore, it’s an exception, and I don’t really like exceptions.

In my opinion, New should be replaced with the first letter of CRUD: Create.

What are you doing when you start something new? You’re creating. It doesn’t have to be a work of yours, it could be a new browser window, but you created it. You didn’t New it.

While we’re at it, yes, all those New menu items don’t make sense to be under File. Shouldn’t New Window be under the Window menu? Maybe, but remember that strong conventions are going to trump good design.

Luckily I’m a web developer, and most people don’t have these menu conventions burned into their brains for web applications. New is still around, but like I said, it’s probably a good idea to gradually push for more ideal design when you can. That’s why my web applications use Create New, and even just Create in some places.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2005 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Design, Development, Abstract. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.