I don't know about fragmentation - a quick look through the examples pulled out in the linked article just makes me think "sloppy". But I do want to pick up on

I don't know about fragmentation - a quick look through the examples pulled out in the linked article just makes me think "sloppy". But I do want to pick up on this idea that touch-based interfaces should all have the same look and feel. That idea made (and to some extent still makes) sense when you have a large desktop shared by a number of different applications, and the user is constantly shifting between them as part of their workflow. But I think there's been a shift over the last few years. On the desktop we have monolithic applications where the user's workflow is expected to be entirely within the application, and these applications have increasingly adopted their own specialised UI style and assumed that they will run full screen. I first saw this with 3d graphic applications like Blender, but you can also see it in things like Aperture and Lightroom with their inconsistent dark palette. And I think this is more pronounced on smartphones and particularly on tablets, where the application you are running takes over the whole display. They aren't described as "immersive" for nothing. I'd argue that when an application is something that you completely immerse yourself in, the need for visual consistency is reduced (though not removed). Yes, we need some common visual language, and for people to understand how that relates to common gestures for interaction. But I think the stand-out applications will be the ones that have a visual style that is consistent with the content of the application, and maybe with other applications from the same publisher. I'd draw a comparison with magazines, particularly as that's representative of the kind of content that is making its way into custom applications on tablets. We don't expect Vogue and Wired to share a consistent font and the same iconography to help the reader navigate - instead we expect each of them to have their own house style consistent from issue to issue, but different from other magazines from the same stable. At the same time we do have certain common expectations that come from the conventions and physical form of the magazine, and we may also notice some common design elements due to them sharing a publisher. I'd compare this with Apple's use of skeuomorphism in some applications. Maybe we should think of it as Apple's house style for some of its applications, and not seek to ape it in our own. It's quite Ok to develop your own house style building on a common design vocabulary - look at how Tapbots (http://tapbots.com/ http://tapbots.com/) work their own style into their apps for example. We're still working out what works best on these devices, but I'm not convinced that consistency of visual design is all that important any more.