Consistent Layout

The documentation system tenet of consistent layout states that documentation layouts should be consistent across the enterprise and not vary by business domain, department, or other arbitrary criteria. This tenet supports the principle of low cognitive load by minimizing the context switching that users experience when we arbitrarily change how content is laid out. 

This tenet also complements the tenet of composability and the tenet of embedding and blending given that they are grounded on the assumption that a composite document—made up of document parts or content from external sources—has a consistent layout that is indistinguishable from a document typed from scratch. 

The purpose of a documentation system is not the centralization of files, but the ability to equalize information to enable rapid scanning and apples-to-apples comparisons. 

As Krug (2006), explained, “Dividing the page into clearly defined areas is important because it allows users to decide quickly which areas of the page to focus on and which areas they can safely ignore”. Whenever we change the layout, we upset the user’s orientation model and force them to determine which are the focus vs ignore areas all over again. 

The problem of changing layouts is most impactful when upsetting the visual hierarchy. This most certainly occurs when switching between applications, file formats, and web sites. As Krug explained, this results in a “much slower process of scanning the page for revealing words and phrases”, given that the user has to reorient themselves to find out “what’s important and how things are organized”.

In essence, layout is not about how documentation ‘looks’, but about how a document’s semantic structure is organized. When a user encounters two documents with different layouts, we force them to work out the semantic similarities themselves, and we therefore violate the principle of low cognitive load.

At a bare minimum, a consistent layout should provide the user, at a cursory glance—three seconds or less—with a clear indication of:

1. The document’s title
   
2. The document’s author
3. The document’s summary—versus the document’s larger body of text
4. The document’s section breakdown or table of contents
5. The document’s spatial location (e.g., navigation breadcrumbs)
6. The document’s semantic properties (if any)
7. Wayfinding content clearly demarcated

It is not sufficient that the document contains said information compartments somewhere; it is essential that they appear in the same location, same order, and using the same typeface so that the user can quickly recognize them.