This design principle is both a quality that designers need to have but also a technique that designers can apply to their works. First, it describes the designers’ ability to embrace unknowns and serendipity in the process of creating a design. Second, curiosity principle is also a popular design technique used to drive user behaviors, generate excitement, and provide motivations.
“Applying Curiosity to Interaction Design: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know.” Johnny loves you. Accessed October 24, 2009. http://johnnyholland.org/2009/08/curiosity-and-interaction-design/.
Example from original source
Hot Wheels’s mystery car
Example not cited by original source
You never know the next profile you are going to see on Tinder!
Example from real life
I saw this mysterious coffee vending machine on a street. There’s only one completely black can in this machine, so you don’t even know what you are buying! As you see in the photo, there’s a pretty long queue and a big crowd surrounded the machine.