Download a free poster of Jakob’s Usability Heuristic #2 at the bottom of this article.
By nature, human beings find comfort in familiarity. It is for this reason that Jakob Nielsen’s second usability heuristic, match between the system and the real world, is so important. The principle states:
The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
As UX professionals, we should never assume that our own interpretations and understanding of words or objects match those of our users. (You ≠ user, as it says on our T-shirts.) How we interpret the world around us depends on a variety of circumstantial and personal factors. Experiences we’ve had, items we’re familiar with, our beliefs, ideas, and values all contribute to how we infer meaning, and nuances in interpretation will often vary from individual to individual. To further define this heuristic, let’s break it down to explore the meaning of each part.
Familiar Language
If people don’t understand the terms used on a site, not only will they feel unsure and ignored, but many will be forced to go elsewhere to find explanations or even to complete their task. (Familiar words are also better for SEO, because they’re what users search for.)
Users should always be able to understand meaning without having to go look up a word’s definition in a search engine. For example, a preventative-care website by BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina uses clear headlines and relatable copy that’s easy to understand. It delivers simple definitions and examples that clarify exactly what preventive care is and why it is important. The site provides answers to basic questions about preventive care and explains what’s included in BlueCross BlueShield’s benefits.
In contrast, the About page for Abacus legal software’s website contains overly technical language and jargon. The language used in the Abacus Private Cloud Quick Facts section is unnecessarily complex and uses obscure phrases that only a specialized IT professional (not a lawyer or common user) would understand. Additionally, the copy includes several acronyms but fails to explain their significance or meaning. Never assume that users will understand an abbreviation or acronym at first read. Lead with the full phrase, what it means, and why it matters before condensing it down to a shorter mnemonic.
Leverage Familiarity with Real-World Objects and Activities
Skeuomorphic web design is passé, but its basic principle — to create an interaction that mimics one from the physical world — capitalizes on people’s existing knowledge and helps them easily learn an interface, with no need for training.
That is because people build mental models or theories of how a system works based on their past experiences with real-world objects. Therefore, when users transition from the physical world to the digital world, they carry those interpretations with them. Users expect that UI elements which reflect material objects be similar to those objects from the real world. For example, a compass app on the iPhone functions much like an actual compass does in real life. Though the use of flat design and minimalism are now preferred over skeuomorphic design, including familiar elements and activities in the interface will help users move through the experience with ease.
Awareness discrepancies can cause real problems for users if objects in the interface don’t align to their version of reality. For example, on Cars.com, we observed gray half circles with white symbols in the lower corners of an image. These elements represent the controls that should be used to scroll left or right through the image gallery. Though they loosely resemble the objects that preserve the corners of a photo in a scrapbook, they don’t look like buttons or arrows, nor do they symbolize a familiar element that’s associated with paging through photos in the real world or the digital space. They represent a failed attempt at skeuomorphic design.
Leveraging familiarity with the real world goes beyond visual resemblance. Each culture has established, widely spread metaphors that should be taken into account when we design interfaces. (For an in-depth discussion of these metaphors, see George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s book Metaphors We Live By.) For example, in the Western word, we associate more with up and less with down. So, a headphone design in which the button that increases the volume is placed above the button that lowers represents a natural mapping that takes advantage of this metaphor. Such natural mappings that follow users’ expectations and match their view of the world make it easy for users to complete tasks intuitively without having to remember any additional information.
The second heuristic applies not only to words and objects but also to how a digital experience makes users feel and their expectations for a process. For example, sending a text message feels like passing a note, viewing photos on Facebook feels like turning the pages in a photo album, choosing a movie to watch on Netflix feels like scanning the shelves of a video store, and highlighting passages on Medium feels much like using a brightly colored marker to select important text in a book. Familiarity is what makes these experiences enjoyable.
To match user’s expectations and prior experiences with real-world systems, information should be presented in a natural and logical way. An example of an instance where information is not placed in a clear and logical order can be observed on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s mobile website, when users start the Global Entry enrollment process. Upon landing on the page, users are inundated with notifications that are out of order and do not fit with the first step in the process. In addition, the first notification uses technical language and internal-facing acronyms that do not help users understand what to do if they already have an account. To improve the experience, notifications like these should always be placed contextually in the flow, where they make the most sense for relevant user groups. In their current place, users will scan right past them and might miss important content.
Conclusion
Though we’ve broken down the individual parts of this heuristic to understand it further, it’s important to keep in mind that all parts of the principle must work together in order for the experience to succeed.
Upholding the second usability heuristic in writing, visual, and interaction design demonstrates that the site knows its users and cares about them. It shows empathy and acknowledges them as important. In an age where users read less and less but are inundated with more and more online options, prioritizing and applying the second usability heuristic is a dependable way to differentiate while staying relevant, building trust, and instilling feelings of familiarity, which will lead to loyal users.
For more information on how to write digital copy based on the way users think and behave, take our full-day training course, Writing Compelling Digital Copy.
Reference
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. 2003. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.
Share this article: