Part Three: The details · Screens
Putting everything in one place saves people a click. A screen where everything is equally prominent gives no hint about what to do first.
Here is a home screen with six panels, four buttons of equal weight and a sidebar of twenty links. The reports are there because someone wanted them one click away. So is the recent activity, and so is the banner about the new feature. A person arriving to do one thing has to read all of it to find where that thing is. People who know the product learn to ignore most of the screen. Newcomers assume all of it matters and do not know where to start.
The saved click was a small gain. Clicking is quick when the next step is obvious. Looking, comparing and deciding is the slow part, and a crowded screen makes people do it on every visit.
A screen with one purpose answers a single question: what is this for? On a pharmacy's page for one prescription, nearly everyone who opens it wants a refill. So the page shows the medicine, how many refills are left, and one button that asks for the next one. The history, the transfer form and the printable record still exist. They live one step away, where the few people who want them will look.
In a product people work in all day, the purpose is often a list and the next thing to do with it. The rule holds there too: one list, one main action, and the rest turned down or moved.
New! Set up auto-refill reminders
Amoxicillin 500 mg · 2 refills left
Recent activity: picked up March 2 · renewed January 14 · dose changed in November
Request refill Transfer Print History
Therefore:
Decide the one thing each screen is for and the one action that completes it. Give the screen to those two, and move whatever does not serve them to a quieter place or another screen.
In practice. Write the purpose of your busiest screen in one sentence. Then list everything on the screen that does not serve it. Each item on that list needs a quieter place or another screen.
Goes with. Screens fill up the way products do, one reasonable request at a time, so SAY NO BY DEFAULT (23). What stays is ranked by LOUD, QUIET, SILENT (63). What you moved aside goes to SHOW A LITTLE, OFFER MORE (68).