Design Pattern Deviants

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About Design Pattern Deviants

Liz Danzico gave a presentation called The Seven Lies of Information Architecture at An Event Apart in Chicago (Aug 2007) Afterwards, I had all kinds of questions like: When is it best to follow the rules? When is it better to bend (or break) them? How do you prove to a client or boss that a solution that breaks the rules might serve users better?

Bosses and clients and curious people like me love examples -- lots of examples!

So here's our mission (and yours too, should you choose to accept it) :
1. Collect examples of sites that do break one or any of the rules but work better because of that.
2. Collect examples of sites that don't break the rules but would be easier or more fun to use if they did.

Here are the 7 lies from the presentation. We'll start with these, but please feel free to add more. Tag them with one or other of the 'lies' or in whatever other way you think makes sense.

1. Navigation must always be consistent.
2. There is a magic number (plus or minus two).
3. Users must get to all parts of the site all the time.
4. Users must know where they are at all times.
5. The user experience must be seamless.
6. Shorter is better.
7. Information architects must do information architecture.