Rules of User Experience

Rule #1: The Golden Rule of UX: Don’t waste people’s time.

Time is of the essence. Make it work as quick as it can and/or should.

Rule #2: Make it useful

If someone decides to partake in the experience you created and it doesn’t do something useful you’ve wasted their time. This is just a repetition of Rule #1.

Have goals related to usefulness. Make it worth their time to experience.

Rule #3: Make it intuitive

Because making our users spend too much time to figure something out would violate Rule #1. This is just a repetition of Rule #1.

Rule #4: Make it beautiful

Because if it’s beautiful, it will generate joy to our user, therefor it will start off with at least a small amount of usefulness; see Rule #2.

Rule #5: Make it authentic

If a user spends time in your experience only to find out it wasn’t what it appeared to be then you will have violated Rule #1.

Rule #6: Be consistent

Consistency means users don’t have to learn new interactive patterns over again. This makes your UI more intuitive, see Rule #3. Consistency also makes it easier to keep your experience beautiful, see Rule #4.