Bonus Chapter - UX Patterns

A long time ago, computer software was sold with heavy, printed manuals and in many cases, also with specialized training. While some of this still applies to corporate applications and specialized hardware, such a concept has almost completely disappeared from the consumer market. Imagine that, for each website, you had to read a manual and attend three months of training classes before even using it. How come, today, a user can be presented with a new application and somehow manage to accomplish basic tasks at first sight? No doubt, a great contributor to this current situation is the years of study and progress in the areas of human-computer interactions, a discipline almost as old as computers themselves.

In this chapter, we will take a step back from the intricacies of inner-working software patterns and architecture and look at some of the well-established patterns for designing a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). We will do the following...