How to track common UI element placement?

Question

For common elements, such as a logout button on a website, save button in an application, need to be presented to users in an standard, easily discoverable way. How do you go about deciding where in your application to place these elements? Do you research similar apps and try to follow convention? Is there any database that attempts to track the use of these common elements or is this too hard to capture?

Answer 1

I research similar apps and try to follow convention...

E.g. logout goes up in the top right near the "X"/close in most applications

Save/Edit buttons towards the bottom of the thing I'm editing... since contextually they happen after I finish the editing I just did.

Then again, you have apps like Outlook... that have the send/save buttons at the top.

In general though... I have application-wide actions (e.g. login/logout/help user info at the top)

Item specific tend to be inline or just after the item they are adding/editing.

Answer 2

The goal is to put UI elements where users expect to find them. You want to leverage the knowledge that they already have about how applications work.

So, looking at the the UI elements for the OS that you are targeting is helpful. Unfortunately, there are some key differences here between Windows and Mac, you will have to pick one or switch based on the OS if you target both.

Looking at applications that are similar to yours is generally not a good idea unless you believe that people using your product are already using these other products and you want them to switch.

Instead, you look at products that are complementary to yours, or products that you expect everyone is familiar with. At one point it was a good idea to look at Excel and Word to know how an Windows application should work; But I don't think that the current versions of Excel and Word are a good model, they deviate too much from the way the OS works. You could still use older versions - before the ribbon, if you are targeting Windows.

It's best to be a bit conservative, choosing applications that have been out for a while and people are likely to be comfortable with rather than chasing the latest design innovations that are coming out of Apple and Microsoft.