Full Speed

[ August 9, 2005 ]

Degradable User Interfaces

Jason Kottke exposed a delightful idea in a comment on one of his postings today:

jkottke says:
Degradable interfaces…the more you use it the more wear it shows. Why does everything have to look like it has never been used? Give me hard edges that become blunt, rounded corners that get shiny, labels that wear off.

I love this idea. A couple of years ago, I was going to launch a design for kottke.org that changed the more you used it. First time users get new graphics but someone who’s visited the site 50 times gets a less “branded” version, the idea being that someone who’s been here 50 times knows where they are and doesn’t need any big logo or anything, just the info they’re after.

I have not seen any examples of this type of behavior on a website, but I would certainly love to see it in action.

© 2014 Scott Johnson (info)
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