Behavior-Based V.S. Function-Based User Interface

With the rapid development of intelligent innovations and trends in the Internet industry, there are more and more occasions when people need to face when the increasing demand for new interface and new operations. In this case, regardless of the product itself, good user-experience is the key to influence whether users are able to quickly accept, adapt to or even come to rely on the product. With the increasing demand for good of use-experience, it is extremely important challenge to enable ordinary users easily find information based on their habit, without new learning or guidance. Many factors affect the user-experience for interface usage. A large part of existing research in design discipline focus on how to better present information on the screen, while a relatively small part of studies focus on how to properly organize information presented on interface or the logic behind the screen. In fact, how information and functions are organized in interfaces actually determines the basis of a easy and good use-experience, from a more fundamental level, because the organization and architecture of information and functions are the more fundamental part of interface design.Professor Xin Xiangyang's “logic of behaviors” in the context of interaction design is a new concept, as opposed to the traditional concept of “Logic of things”. He stressed that the essence of interaction design is to "design behaviors" and therefore the interaction design process should more follow logic of behaviors rather than logic of things. There are two forms of interfaces proposed innovatively by professor Xin Xiangyang, the behavior-based user interface and function-based user interface. Both organize information according the logical difference of how information will be presented on the interface, and that logical difference marks the distinction of these two types. Behavior-based user interface emphasizes user behavior as the basis for organizing information or functionality; and function-based user interface complies with the logic of things, emphasizing the organizational structure and content of the information or functionality to their own property as the basis. Although both types of interfaces are projected from the users' perspective, considering a more reasonable way of organizing and presenting information to the users, since these two interfaces depend on two distinct theories of thinking, they are different in many ways and of many degrees. As a starting point, the subject of this paper will be based on the theory proposed by Professor Xin Xiangyang, and will further clarify the definition of behavior-based and function-based user interface, employ more cases to illustrate the differences while comparing of the two former of interfaces; in addition to the advancement and refinement of professor Xin's original theory, this paper also aims to contribute to the prosperity of the discipline of interface design, especially the theoretical part of information architecture, providing new ideas and corresponding guidance for the front-line interface-design practice.This paper starts from the concept of logic of information organizing, combining relevant existing theoretical research, and clarifies how logic of information organizing influences the user-experience. Following this line of thought, this paper continues to define the concept and theory of behavior-based and function-based user interface, as proposed originally by Professor Xin, and carefully illustrates their differences through a few sets of typical cases. To elaborate a more comprehensive in-depth comparison of behavior-based and function-based user interface, this paper examines how these two types influence the users' decision-making efficiency, mainly through usability testing with user interviews. Data analysis of experimental test is mainly used for a direct comparison of results of decision-making efficiency; and with the observation, interviews and other methods, this paper further analyzes those differences, and also takes into considerations of relevant factors that affects users' decision-making. In the process of comparing these two forms of interface information architecture, this study first goes through case studies for preliminary analysis, then extract key differences, and then verify and compare results obtained in the form of workshops.Since the study of logic and things/behavior is still relatively new theoretical ground, this paper is by no means conclusive; it is meant to propose some fresh and reflective thoughts for the further prosperity of this subject. Its related areas are still worth exploring.