The Verb on web and in life

In the era of flat design, the rules of interface design, formulated two decades ago by Jeff Raskin, are more relevant than ever.

One of these rules says: there must be a verb on the button.

Indeed, a few years ago this strange law did not find understanding in design. What does it mean? Why should a verb be on the button? The fact is that five years ago the typical button on the site and in the mobile application looked completely different. It clearly stood out from the rest of the interface, had a brighter color, stroke, gradient and cast a powerful shadow.

This button is very difficult to skip. The use of verbs on these buttons is just a formality: instead of „Buy Now“ and „Subscribe“ you could write „Purchase“ and „Subscription„, and it is unlikely that the interface's clarity would be greatly affected. Therefore, the need to use the verb is rather ephemeral: the button itself means an action, so it's better to write a verb.

However, modern interfaces long ago got rid of real world imitating called skweomorphism, thrown out textures, gradients and shadows. Modern buttons are just a rectangle with text inside.

In this example, there is exactly one hint of a button: the verb „Subscribe“. If you remove the interface of this last hook, the button will finally turn into a rectangle with an inscription.

The word „Subscription“, taken in the frame, can be anything: a header, an indicator of the subscription process, or an advertising plaque about a subscription, for example, on the magazine's website. There is no chance to find out that this is actually a button, unless there is a field for entering an email or another prompt near it.

Let's see how this button looks on a typical modern website.

Experienced users and designers may not feel a dirty trick, but only because of their experience. A simple user will be looking for a button for a very long time, because it is too weak to stand out against the background of other elements. It has the same frame as the page title, the same white color and the same font. And no hint of a button!

What does the word „Subscription“ in the frame mean? The first impression is: it's just an informational inscription that after the site is open, there will be a subscription for something. Only if you carefully read the entire text, consider the field for e-mail and turn on all your smartness, you can guess that this is a button for subscribing to the newsletter about starting a new startup.

If at least this button had a verb „Subscribe“, this would doubled the clarity of the interface. Visually, the button would not became more noticeable, but at least after it were found, the user would have no doubts that this rectangle can subscribe him to something.

Of course, talking about the verb would not be entirely true. Rather, it is a question of the predicate or, in general, about any part of speech expressed as a predicate. For example, buttons with the words like „Ok“, „Cancel“, „Stop“ are definitely recognizable as action buttons, although they use nouns. Simply, these words act as a predicate, a command: we are accustomed that the word „Stop“ means the order to stop.

An interesting example from real life is connected with the theme of actions and verbs. It's funny to watch how children define left and right: they imagine that they holding the pen and writing a text. Which hand is more convenient to write? Aha, there’s the right one! (Or the left one, if you are left-handed.) Over time, this technique comes to automatism, accelerates, but even most adults easily confuse the parties in a hurry, and those who do not confuse, for a small fraction of a second, without noticing it, still reproduce the children's reception with a writing hand.

And so the author repeatedly faced with the fact that he could not immediately understand the meaning of the door plaques inscribed in Russian „To myself“ and „From myself“. This is the classic and very confusing way to say „Push“ and „Pull“ on Russian doors. Sure, with constant repetition, any action comes to automatism. But as in the case of the right hand, most people imagine for a short moment how they will open the door: „to myself: this means closer to my body, therefore, I need to pull“ — that’s a thought I reproduce every time.

Especially surprisingly, this ephemeral feature becomes much more real when a person, at least with some basic knowledge of English, travels to the UK or the US and discovers that for some reason he understands the foreign signatures Push and Pull much faster.

Just because the verb!