Design philosophies - escape rooms and hatch rooms

[Melooon]

I recently submitted a bug report to the developer of the theme template the MelonLand Wiki uses because I could not figure out how to delete pages on DokuWiki and believed the delete button must be missing.

I quickly realized that it was my mistake, there is no delete button, you just erase all text on a page to delete the page    However the developer wrote back to me anyway with this really interesting description of design philosophies that I had never considered before; its a bit obscure sounding when you first read it, but if you're familiar with these platforms it starts to make a lot of sense.

It makes me wonder which ones I like most, why I like them and what ones do I use when I'm designing things. Id love to hear peoples thoughts, also maybe you know more about this than me and can add to it!

Dokuwiki is using a "zone based menu labelling" as their philosophy, which is in huge contrast to Microsoft's "verb based menu labelling" and Apple's "noun based menu labelling".
Also Dokuwiki is designed more like an "escape room" than a heavily abstracted "hatch room" (Apple) or a tweakable "buffet room" (Microsoft), which is also another paradigm to get your head around, as there's not much websites and software nowadays doing that design philosophy as well.
As this design philosophy is completely different and alien from the vast majority of software that people have typically used in their life, well both of them, it takes time getting used to how the usability of Dokuwiki works, as in what goes where.
PS. For lack of a better name. I don't think these terminologies have a name but they surely exist in designers minds as a cognitive concept.

[TheFrugalGamer]

I'm not sure I grasping everything the dev's saying here--how would you define "Zone based labeling?"

Being pretty familiar with Microsoft products, I think I may know what "verb based labeling" means, as in "Run...," "Go to here..." etc., or maybe I'm being too literal?

[Melooon]

I think literal is correct - my interpretation of it is like this:

Microsoft - Verb, as you say its like "Run, Cut, Control" - it also has a "buffet" design style which Microsoft calls ribbons, a buffet is a selection of interactions (The editor buttons on this forum are a buffet style interface).

Apple - Noun, I guess apples interfaces are more like "Connect to Server", "Go Home", on mac if there was a Spotify share button it would just say "Spotify" as apposed to "Share". Also the "hatch room" idea is like, icons that jump into different rooms, the iPhone is the best example of this; interface interactions are like doors that jump into new spaces.

On Doku - what they mean by Zone interactions is that there is no button, the text area is a zone and you interact with the zone by modifying the content in it. So on doku, deleting text in the zone is the same as clicking a delete button on mircosoft, or jumping to a new blank room on a mac.

Its not a totally clear cut rule, all of these things use a mix of these design philosophies, but its interesting to identify them and think about how they are used!

I think my own site is very much a hatch based design; and that explains why people say it feels like old mac shareware, its using mac design philosophies - I just never had a word for that before! Id also say my site is almost more like "mystery puddle interactions" the hatches are more mysterious and less defined.

[TheFrugalGamer]

Aaah, ok yeah that makes more sense. The "Zone based" design reminds me of Wordpress and Drupal, which are probably a mix of all those styles, but Drupal especially works more with zones than other systems.

I'm curious as to which heading my site would fall under. I've never really thought about it that way, but as it's grown, I have run into problems relating to where best to put things. Should this be its own page? Should I make it a child page? Should it go in the blog? Thinking about a website in terms of rooms can help direct where best you'd go to find some of the content I have up.

[desbest]

It's nice to see that you lot are talking about this.
I'll type up a blog article about it later this month.
I just have to write some consulting articles for six other people first, for their research studies.

Update

Here's the blog articles. I'll get them all finished in May.
Sorry for the long delay!

• What is Abstraction in Interaction Design?
• What is Affordances in Interaction Design
• Noun verb zone! Menus get affected by parts of speech

2nd Update

• How My Itemising Disorder Affects Me
• Visual Noise and Fidelity - Take a Look (no longer just GUI but now more generalised)

Most of the articles are done but I'll fill in all the points, images, links and finally get it polished in August. I need to take a break before I get much itemising burnout.

Now that 9 months time of writing 180,000+ words is done, I can now start posting on forums, like this one! For context, a typical non-fiction book is 35,000 words.  

[Melooon]

Here's the blog articles. I'll get them all finished in May.
Sorry for the long delay!

Just finished reading through these, it's an interesting analysis and I look forward to the final polished version! And thank you for keeping up with it after all this time

P.s. Is it true that write protection made floppy disks faster?? I thought it just stopped you from accidentally overwriting the disk Also, did a Microsoft rep really tell you on an official forum that they deliberately made Office harder to use to force people to put more effort into learning to use it? I cant imagine Microsoft saying that today

[desbest]

Just finished reading through these, it's an interesting analysis and I look forward to the final polished version! And thank you for keeping up with it after all this time

There's 2 more articles now if you scroll up. I'll get them all finished and polished up in August but the overall point is there.

P.s. Is it true that write protection made floppy disks faster?? I thought it just stopped you from accidentally overwriting the disk

Yes it did, especially if you was using a CD-ROM and a floppy disk at the same time. I remember some video games would even support saving "game slots" on a floppy disk, so you can take your "save point" on another computer if your friend also had the CD-ROM. Remember we had Pentium 2 (not 3) back then and it was very slow. You had to of been there at the time!

Can you believe that this £1000 computer from the 90s also came with a built-in fax machine?

If you look at what Packard Bell £1000 computer we had to share as a family as a child, then it'll start to make sense.

Also, did a Microsoft rep really tell you on an official forum that they deliberately made Office harder to use to force people to put more effort into learning to use it? I cant imagine Microsoft saying that today

I can't be sure-fire correct as to why they were more honest by then and wouldn't be nowadays. If it was me, I would be concerned about brand dilution and brand hijacking but I think nowadays, it can also be due to a PR defensive as window dressing.

The golden rules of PR

If it goes wrong the first time, it's nobody's fault.
If it goes wrong the second time, it's your fault.
If it goes wrong the third time, you're fired.

In short, it's never the manager or the company's fault. 

Author: unknown