Devs want to put the menu where users expect it. Where do users expect the menu to be? Wherever devs usually put it. Where do devs usually put the menu? Where

Devs want to put the menu where users expect it. Where do users expect the menu to be? Wherever devs usually put it. Where do devs usually put the menu? Where the users previously expected it to be, which is wherever devs put it before then, and so on… There’s an informal way to solve this infinite regression. It’s a focal point - also called a Schelling point for Thomas Schelling, who proposed this idea in his analysis of cooperation without communication. The usual explanation is something like so: “Imagine you airdrop two people into unfamiliar terrain. Their goal is to find each other. They have no radios or methods of communication. All they have is a map, and the knowledge that the other person has a copy of the same map. The map has several river crossings, a handful of houses, multiple trails, etc. The topographical layer indicates one large hill near the middle. Both subjects will identify the top of that hill as the ‘correct’ meeting place and head there, even though it has some inefficient drawbacks as a meeting place, such as requiring you to walk uphill.” Developers and users also have to coordinate without (much) communication, so there are similar pressures on user interfaces, except with the added complication that the shared map now includes history and tradition. Once you learn this concept you will see it everywhere in user interface design. The cog icon, the floppy disk icon, even the vilified hamburger menu icon are all focal points. Login/password entry is done in the center of the screen. Collapsible sidebar menus are on the left. There were initial reasons for why these things were picked in the first place, but that merely “put them on the map”, so to speak. The reason for the convergence is that once these things were on the map, they naturally revealed themselves to be focal points over time.