jigsaw puzzles and cues

When someone is lost, can’t find a solution, finds something hard to decipher, the person looks for cues, clues, patterns, references. This applies to any problem solving process. This should be mimicked in the UI as well.Assume you’re solving a jigsaw puzzle – you try to look at the reference image and identify patterns and colors and then segregate the pieces and then start building. Another way is to first find the edge pieces and then solve the inside. There are different ways, but the commonality is that we always look for some point of reference.

When a person is navigating a UI, he always wants to be aware of where he is, to give him a context. At any point when he is lost, he starts looking for clues, something that tells him where he is, and where he can go from there.

It’s hard enough we have to search for clues in the real world. Can’t we make things a little easier in the virtual world and design in such a way that there’s no need for clues, but if needed, they are easy to find.