On which side of the road should we drive? Although I probably could make up an argument for either side based on the asymmetry of the brain’s hemispheres, this would be little convincing. Driving on the right is not safer (or less safe) than driving on the left. But it is pretty obvious that randomly assigning roads a ‘drive left’ or ‘drive right’ sign would lead to extremely dangerous situations, with frustrated drivers, accidents and confusion.
For many design choices in software applications there is no clear best option. The best thing to do in such a case is to aim for consistency (both internal consistency, within the application, and external consistency, with other applications in the typical usage environment). In this respect, human interface guidelines have great value and following guidelines results in applications consistent with your user’s expectations.
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