Novel Notions Anti-Pattern

Novel designs are intended to be new, edgy, creative, and innovative. But most of the time they’re just bad, hard to understand, and harder to use. Richard Gunther, creator of the BUI* Gallery, explains it as: “You can usually tell when a mobile app development team comes from an old web development background. They often attempt to translate old user interaction models to the new platform and assert their “creativity” by introducing non-standard UI elements.”

Novel Notions can be found anywhere in an application, from primary navigation down to an individual control, interaction, or gesture. Weight Watcher’s has a number of Novel Notions in their application, the most obvious being their primary navigation. They created a custom menu drawer that contains a Springboard.