Baby Duck Syndrome

This is my most refered HCI phenomena while talking to co-workers, so I should write a post about it.

Baby Duck Syndrome is a human-computer interaction phenomena; if an established piece of technology has a way of interacting with the user, independent of logic, users most likely to choose that way of interaction.

Here is few examples;

• We still use the floppy disk icon for "Save" functionality in the interfaces we build today. Eventhough most young people using technology don't know what a floppy disk is.
• Facebook and twitter uses blue as their accent design color. If you are designing a new interface for a social network, using blue will help user think your website is also a social network website.
• When Windows users start using Mac, they usually look for a Start button / menu in the interface.

Product designers can use Baby Duck Syndrome to their advantage. While creating a new interface, making research on most used interfaces on the spesific thing you are building will help you make decisions that doesn't alienate the user and make your thing more usable in general.

But, I would additionally say that there is value in drifting off the current interaction flows and trying out new things.