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Consistent UI can make it easy for people to use applications, for certain applications, sometimes. It's not a hard and fast rule. Let's say I'm making a banki

Consistent UI can make it easy for people to use applications, for certain applications, sometimes. It's not a hard and fast rule. Let's say I'm making a banking app that is generally just used for people to check their balance and other simple tasks. It's too my advantage to follow the standard UI conventions of the OS. If, however, I'm making an app that I expect the majority use case to be power users that use the app many times per day, I'm going to optimize for them. That may mean seemingly unintuitive gestures, shaking the phone to switch between app modes, radial menus, or something else. I'm not saying that conventions don't have a place, they obviously do, but I think app designers should be able to design the experience for users that they see as best, rather than following convention for the sake of convention.

yoz-y 10y ago
I definitely agree. In this particular case however I do not think that Google Maps is considered an application for power users. On mobile especially one has to be very wary of advanced features as the discoverability is really bad.
CannisterFlux 10y ago
Funny you should mention a banking app. The ING banking app on Android is dreadful! It is mostly because it doesn't adhere to any of the standard Android conventions such as a toolbar, sliding left-hand drawer for jumping to different sections, the "back stack" is well handled, etc. It makes moving around a pain. You can't easily jump between your accounts or cards, pressing back after viewing your balance takes you right back to the start, and so on. Another bit of anecdata is the Android ebay app. It used to be an OK not-really-material app, probably iterated on since the Gingerbread days, then Holoiefied. Then about a year ago they updated it to be (I think) more iPhone-like and the fans really hammered it in the Play store. Lots of "what the hell have you done, 1-star" type reviews. I didn't like it much either. The problem was again that navigation was weird and non-standard. Everything was light-grey on white too, which didn't help. Then they updated it again fairly recently to be what you might call a prototypical Android Material-design app, and it really was a relief to see. Now it works great, there are far fewer weird mystery navigation parts and the reviews are picking up. I get what you mean, that apps can add things outside the norm, but they really need to get the base layout right. If you have a few odd/power features, that's great, but don't make the whole app some weird Homer's Car-style monstrosity.
kenjackson 10y ago
I agree with that, but note that especially in the mobile world -- apps that have "power users" are few and far between.

yoz-y 10y ago

I definitely agree. In this particular case however I do not think that Google Maps is considered an application for power users. On mobile especially one has to be very wary of advanced features as the discoverability is really bad.

CannisterFlux 10y ago

Funny you should mention a banking app. The ING banking app on Android is dreadful! It is mostly because it doesn't adhere to any of the standard Android conventions such as a toolbar, sliding left-hand drawer for jumping to different sections, the "back stack" is well handled, etc. It makes moving around a pain. You can't easily jump between your accounts or cards, pressing back after viewing your balance takes you right back to the start, and so on. Another bit of anecdata is the Android ebay app. It used to be an OK not-really-material app, probably iterated on since the Gingerbread days, then Holoiefied. Then about a year ago they updated it to be (I think) more iPhone-like and the fans really hammered it in the Play store. Lots of "what the hell have you done, 1-star" type reviews. I didn't like it much either. The problem was again that navigation was weird and non-standard. Everything was light-grey on white too, which didn't help. Then they updated it again fairly recently to be what you might call a prototypical Android Material-design app, and it really was a relief to see. Now it works great, there are far fewer weird mystery navigation parts and the reviews are picking up. I get what you mean, that apps can add things outside the norm, but they really need to get the base layout right. If you have a few odd/power features, that's great, but don't make the whole app some weird Homer's Car-style monstrosity.

kenjackson 10y ago

I agree with that, but note that especially in the mobile world -- apps that have "power users" are few and far between.