Facilitation
- Synonyms - facilitator; helper; smoothing the wheels
Facilitation is the term for making an action or a process easy or easier. In user-experience terms, facilitation can be applied to an interface or an element of an interface - this new menu structure will facilitate better access to common tools. But the term is more commonly used in a human resources sense, where one or individuals act to facilitate a group meeting such as a brainstorm session.
Featuritis
- Synonyms - creeping featuritis
Featuritis is the name for the tendency of the number of features in a product or system to rise over time with each new release of that product or system. The products or systems that result from featuritis are often referred to as "bloatware (qua bloated software). Microsoft Word is a classic example of bloatware.
With added features comes added complexity, usually estimated as the square of the number of features. In other words, if release 2.0 of a product or system has twice as many new features as release 1.0, then the complexity of release 2.0 will be four (4) times that of release 1.0.
Fitts Law
"The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to it and its size"
Whilst at first glance, this law might seem patently obvious it is one of the most ignored (and perhaps wilfully subverted) principles in design.
Fitts' Law dictates that Apple Mac pull-down menu acquisition should be approximately five times faster than Windows menu acquisition - and this is indeed proven out (for pre-Vista releases of the Windows OS).
Fitts' law indicates that the most quickly accessed targets on any computer display are the four corners of the screen, because of their pinning action, and yet, for years, they seemed to be avoided at all costs by designers. Consequences of Fitts' Law include:
- Use large objects for important functions (Big buttons are faster)
- Use the pinning actions of the sides, bottom, top, and corners of your display
A single-row toolbar with tool icons that "bleed" into the edges of the display will be many times faster than a double row of icons with a carefully applied one-pixel non-clickable edge between the tools and the side of the display.
F.U.N.
F.U.N. stands for Forgotten, Unappreciated and Neglected, and refers to the disappointingly prevalent belief that enjoyment - pleasure, humour, irreverence, delight and so on - has no place in the workplace.
Nothing could be further from the truth of course. Enjoyment is central to good design, successful products and effective communication.
Always try to enjoy yourself when working to create something new. Always strive for fun, and not F.U.N.
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