STC Usability SIG
Newsletter: Usability Interface
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| Using a Style Guide to Build Consensus |
by Whitney Quesenbery, Cognetics Corporation
Reprinted from Usability Interface, Vol 7, No. 4, April
2001
Style guides are often requested as a way to promote a common look and feel but do little to address the real problems in the way user interfaces are developed. In many situations, a collection of rules for visual design and the use of controls can seem like a band-aid; promoting surface-level consistency rather than solving the real usability problems. Even when a good style guide is created, it is often ignored after release. Worse, the style guide can become a weapon where a user-centered design process is needed. In either case, the style guide has failed to produce the desired effect. What’s missing is a consensus on the scope, ownership, or content. Solving this problem requires a change in the way style guides are developed, distributed, and used. Three suggestions for teams developing style guides are to start early, to make the emerging style guide widely available, and to plan for long-term maintenance of the guidelines.
First, start early. Don’t wait until the design is almost complete to begin writing or assembling the style guide. Instead, start documenting design decisions as they are made. This may seem like a prescription for a lot of rework as ideas change, but the benefit of being able to see the current status of the work at any time outweighs this concern. In fact, guidelines can be included even before they are completely formalized as long as the status of each section is clearly identified. Early ideas, tentative decisions, and design–meeting minutes can be used to start the guide, with more formal guidelines following as they are developed.
Second, make the emerging style guide widely available. Often a small team is assembled to work on the style guide, and it can be tempting to hold the work close until it is complete. This can be efficient, but it can also make the process seem secretive and simply delay conflicts that can interfere with acceptance of the guidelines. Instead of building broad support for standards and consistency, the inevitable "fear, uncertainty and doubt" can work against them. If the style guide is available online (and in hypertext rather than a single document), people can follow the team’s progress. The team can solicit comments on sections as they are written, allowing input on specific guidelines from those with particular expertise or interest.
Third, plan to maintain and extend the style guide over time. Make it part of an ongoing process in which the guidelines can be explored and tested. Regular design reviews should be scheduled to make compliance part of the normal testing of a product. These reviews are an opportunity to collect samples of how the guidelines apply to real projects and reinforce a shared design vision as well as correcting problems.
A style guide is a lot like usability testing. Neither is as effective at the end of a project as it would have been if integrated into a user-centered design process from the beginning. Wide exposure to comment can seem to make the work more difficult, but allowing those comments while it is still being written can help and promote more effective use of the guidelines by building consensus around them before they are released.
Whitney Quesenbery is the Usability SIG Manager and a principal interface designer at Cognetics Corporation.
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Last updated 27 January 2004