Co.Design

3 Rules Of App Design, According To Yahoo's Marissa Mayer

The ex-Googler and current Yahoo CEO spells out three rules anyone can use to make an app better.

A new book about embattled Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer reveals her three rules of great app design. Written by Nicholas Carlson, Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! details everything from Mayer's early (and misguided) attempts to play Steve Jobs at Yahoo to her contentious decision to change the Yahoo logo. Though she's made some missteps, Mayer has also seen triumph, especially in the design of new apps like Yahoo Weather and Flickr. Here are three rules that informs all of Mayer's decisions when it comes to app design.

• The Two Tap Rule — Mayer has something called the two-tap rule of app design. The test for the rule, Mayer says, is simple: "Once you're in the app, is it two taps to do anything you want to do?" If no, time to redesign the app." The Yahoo Flickr app uses this to great effect: from the opening screen, you can take a picture, surf your screen, navigate albums, check out groups, set alerts, and more, all with just a couple taps.

• The 5-Point Rule — Back in her days at Google, Mayer would tell designers to count a point for every different font, font size, and color on a page. If a page goes above five points, it's time to redesign. (I assume this doesn't include Google's logo, which by this logic counts as 5 points all by itself.) And as my editor points out, it's too bad Mayer hasn't brought the 5-point rule to Yahoo's homepage.

• The 98% Rule — Mayer believes that every product should be designed for the way it will be used 98% of the time. As an example, Carlson says, Mayer will often point to a Xerox copy machine. You can do all sorts of things on a copier, but all 98% of people really want to do is make a single photocopy, which is why using a Xerox is as easy as slapping your paper on the glass and hitting a big green button. According to Mayer, every app should have a button like that. Flickr is a good example here: although Flickr is a huge social network based around photography with a million different features, there's a big, bold camera button right at the bottom of every screen.

What's great about all these rules is how intuitive they are, boiling relatively complex UI/UX principles into terms that anyone can understand and even act upon.

You can read more about Mayer's design principles over at Business Insider.

[Top photo: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty Images. Illustrations: Aksana Shum via Shutterstock]

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21 Comments

  • As mentioned before, I think those are more general guidelines you have to adapt. The 5 points rule is interesting, but I personally find it really interesting. Nevertheless it emphasis and forces designers to think about not doing too much and making things simple, maybe you will have 7 or 8 point, the idea for me is more about thinking about how many different styles you got on a page than to stick to 5 points.

  • Brian Gross

    I run an airline app and would love to see how someone could choose a flight (select origin and destination cities and inbound and outbound dates) in two taps. Let alone buy a ticket.
  • Amar Nath Sameeran

    possible if you could predict the destination and origin beforehand :P

    then it would be a single tap xD, adaptive/predictive modeling based UX is the next big thing brah
  • Alexis de Varennes

    Make use of the location of the user (reverse geocoding / gps) and have the user tap the desination on a map. Upon tapping the user can pick the correct airport from a list of airports in the area? :)

  • First, this is typical over-generalizing, quick sound bytes that don't take actual context of use into account.

    The second two rules are logical and make sense, but the first one is positively INCORRECT. What I have seen in 26 years of usability lab testing -- with hundreds of users -- is that people will click or tap a HUNDRED times if EACH ACT DELIVERS VALUE and moves them closer to their goal.

    This "number of clicks/taps" idea has been around for years, and it has always been wrong. Which has always led to app, site and system design that doesn't properly meet users expectations or allow them to properly predict the outcomes of their actions.

    FC, you are better than this. Yahoo is not making a comeback any time soon. That ship has sailed. And neither Ms. Mayer's or her company's walk matches their talk.

    Talk to actual UX professionals instead of C-level talking heads whose failures far outnumber their successes.
  • Zoe Kulsariyeva

    While I quite enjoy the fact Marissa broke through the glass ceiling, I don't personally enjoy CEOs with sets of debatable (but obligatory) design rules.

    The two-tap rule: I am really interested in the Flickr's user stats after the introduction of the "let's cram everything into the home page" principle, to me as a Flickr user that redesign rendered Flickr as unusable. Moreover, of these 200-something functionalities introduced into home page, some are used 40% of all cases and others in 0,0004% of cases, so making them equally accessible is not a good idea. The five-point rule: sounds good, but rarely is feasible, especially for desktop apps & SaaS with lot's of diverse information (that needs to get a diverse look for distinction). 98% rule: this looks like a monofunctional app to me. In that case it should definitely be adjusted to that 98% of functionality, but apps are rarely monofunctional. This being said, I didn't enjoy the little attacks on Mayer's integrity either.

  • Matthew Meadows

    How absurd, beyond irony. The ceo of one of the ugliest websites in the world is publishing design guidelines for the rest of us. If her design principles have been applied to the home page you don't want them, and if they haven't then what does that say about her role as ceo and the value she places on design? Hubris overload, serious blindspots display.

  • It's too bad that the praise of Meyer is buried within passive aggressive comments about her. " (and misguided) attempts to play Steve Jobs," " Though she's made some missteps," "it's too bad Mayer hasn't brought the 5-point rule to Yahoo's homepage," and "(I assume this doesn't include Google's logo, which by this logic counts as 5 points all by itself.)" I can only imagine how many cheap shots are taken at her in an entire book.

  • Maybe Mayer gets an unfair amount of cheap shots but bottom line is that some of her actions don't match her words. And she has made some very costly blunders which would be glossed over if Yahoo's fortunes were improving significantly under her leadership but they are not.

    I think the extra attention she gets as a female CEO is a double-edge sword. On one hand when the good news comes in she gets extra coverage and a spotlight that the past Yahoo CEO's never got. But when something doesn't go well it seems like she receives more public criticism.
  • Antoine Exupery

    What does Yahoo know? A dinosaur of a company that cannot get with the times? Flickr was just updated as an app because it failed so hard and is not very popular.

  • I'd argue that 98% of people using Flickr aren't wanting to take a picture in the Flickr app. Instead they want to UPLOAD photos into the app. The problem is, their uploader sucks. It's very buggy. The automatic upload doesn't work consistently and there isn't an easy way to make the automatically uploaded photos public or sort them into albums.

  • I thought what matter is the target market and mobile accessability, while go i was using blackberry 9300, i couldn't access the fast & Company website, and i saw no reason why should i buy their magazine, if i can't access their website
  • idember

    Regarding UX: smartphones make great sense for having an internet-connected, app-packed computer in your pocket. Terrific. But for just placing and receiving phone calls? Nightmare.

    Compare with a standard old flip phone. Phone rings, flip it open, you're talking. Flip it closed, you've hung up.

    THAT is great functional design. Does one frequent, important thing with brilliant simplicity.

  • 1) Design a perfect weather app. 2) Send your CMO to SXSW to talk all about the fantastic new app. 3) Realize you are not making any money with the app. 4) Add huge and non-targeted ads to the interface. 5) Lose user base and profits.

    #Fail

  • Two taps is a guideline — not a hard and fast rule. People don't mind tapping more than two times if it allows them to accomplish what they need to accomplish. The task, defines the UX, and you can't liberally expect the "rule" to work without context.