This is what Giovani-the man behind the Pinifarina who design cars for Ferrari told in a show to the host when he asked him if he looks for user feedback for designing future models. If what we said is valid for the automobile design, how came it's not valid for interactive design. For creating something innovative, you have to rely on your creativity rather than the feedback of the user. I am not asking you to completely ignore the user feedback as it, more often than not, contains very valid points. I am asking you to pay only as much attention to it as it deserve and not treat it as gospel.

There is a tendency to believe that if you deviate too much from the normal, your audience will not be able to navigate or understand your site. This may be true to a certain extent, if you make things too abstract, people will find it hard to understand it but if done with a little thought, I don't see any reason why people won't welcome a break from monotony. How else can you explain us getting excited when we see something new and innovative and how our jaws drop when we see something done cleverly than we have ever seen before. The user is not stupid, the user actually is quite smart and he will figure out his way unless you make it a cryptic puzzle.

Standards are not for freshers

That was about the experienced users, now let's talk about people not exposed to the interactive medium or those who have only limited exposure. When we are creating something for the novice users, we are still following the same standards. Now tell me how mush sense does it make. It is like creating something for kids as we would for adults. Adults know how things work and may expect it to be like that all the time while a kid is exploring unknown and will try different techniques to get something to work till he succeeds. A VCR runs when you hit play, true but to a kid it doesn't matter if you have an arrow on a play button. He does not understand it and will try everything till it works. To him it makes not difference if there is an arrow on it on the skull of a cow. How would it help to maintain standards for people who have no frame of reference?

Similarly in an interactive piece, how does it matter if the navigation is a complete standard one or a new one, the user is going to spend the same amount of time in figuring out how to work it. You can place the buttons and still be right or you may not use conventional navigation icons and allow the user to navigate through some other means. There is no wrong here as the user has no frame of reference for it and he is not comparing it to anything.

We know this and still instead of letting our minds wander, we keep doing things the old way and expect different results. No guts no glory, if you are looking for appreciation and respect, get out of using the same old technique, experiment and try something new.