2.10 Use Recognized Design Patterns

Visitors can identify patterns fairly easily, and they like browsing websites and apps and feeling as if they know what they are dealing with. As such, focusing your efforts on producing a product or service that is clean and has key components in easy-to-recognize locations (and visuals) will allow faster user-experiences and fewer emissions.

Criteria

Design Patterns: Provide only essential components visible at the time they are needed. Where appropriate, interfaces should deploy visual styles (patterns) that are easily recognized and used.

Impact

Medium

Effort

Low

Benefits

Environmental:
Using easily recognized design components will reduce the amount of time visitors spend browsing between pages, trying to identify the information they came to your resource to locate. As such, the less time visitors spend on your site, the greater the efficiency savings in terms of emissions.
Accessibility:
Recognizable design patterns can help people with cognitive disabilities easily understand how to perform a task. Similarly, simple layouts often improve access to information as well.
Performance:
Using recognized patterns that appear where visitors expect, and only when they require them may increase the perceived speed of the website or application as navigation from point to point will increase due to the ease of use.

GRI

materials: Medium
energy: Low
water: Medium
emissions: Low

Example

Clean, simple, honest website layout examples.

Resources

View the Guideline