Align with established platform conventions.
Design in accordance with shared behavioral expectations.
Contents 6. Consistency & Coherence 2. Conventions
How systems align with external user expectations.
First, ask yourself
“Does your system honor established user expectations?”
Mission statement
Ensure users transfer prior knowledge by aligning with familiar standards.
Key heuristics Conventions
- Interaction must align with established platform conventions.
- Conventional interaction patterns must be used to reduce onboarding friction.
- Familiar visual forms must match their expected behavior.
- Conventional and non-conventional patterns must not be mixed without clear boundaries.
- Departures from convention must provide clear functional benefit.
- Unconventional behavior must be clearly signaled and confined.
- Primary and high-frequency workflows must adhere to convention.
- Conventional behavior must extend consistently across supported input methods.
Executive brief
The system must honor established conventions to preserve user trust.
Core questions Conventions
“Does the system follow familiar platform conventions?”
“Are users’ prior expectations respected, not broken?”
Focus areas
Trust-transfer
“Can users rely on what they already know?”
“Is familiarity honored or violated?”
Scope-aware
“Where does the system intentionally diverge?”
“Are deviations obvious and justified?”
Consistency-aware
“Are patterns consistent across the system, not just within a single platform?”
“Does interface behavior match learned expectations?”
AI-aware
“Does adaptive behavior preserve platform norms?”
“Is novelty overriding what users already know?”
UX directives Conventions
Leverage familiar interaction patterns.
Use conventional behaviors to reduce onboarding friction.
Ensure behavioral fidelity to conventional forms.
Do not replicate familiar visuals without matching expected behavior.
Apply conventions consistently.
Do not mix conventional and non-conventional patterns without clear boundaries.
Deviate from conventions only with clear benefit.
Ensure convention departures improve function meaningfully.
Signal deviations clearly and confine them locally.
Make unconventional behavior obvious and contained.
Prioritize convention adherence in primary workflows.
Protect high-frequency tasks from unnecessary novelty.
Use conventions to maintain cross-modality consistency.
Ensure conventional behavior extends to all supported inputs.
Executive summary
- Conventions are shared behavioral expectations, not stylistic mimicry.
- They reduce cognitive load by leveraging what users already know.
- The system must honor established patterns in behavior, not just appearance.
- Deviations from convention must provide clear functional benefit and be explicitly signaled.
- Primary workflows must prioritize adherence to convention over novelty.
- Conventions succeed when familiarity accelerates competence without sacrificing clarity or control.
Success indicators
- The interface follows familiar platform patterns.
- Common actions behave as users expect.
- Visual patterns match the behavior users anticipate.
- Unconventional behavior is clearly indicated.
- Primary workflows rely on familiar interaction patterns.
One-line summary
Before users can understand a system quickly, it must respect what they already know.