7 ms·

The death of consistency in UI design

83 points by thomholwerda 14y ago

jiggy2011 14y ago
This is going to be a serious problem for the adoption of web apps. Current problems with web apps are things like lack of keyboard shortcuts (without the browser getting in the way). Browser chrome wasting space in the UI and an overall more "laggy" feeling than a native app. All of these problems however can (have?) be improved upon. UI consistency will be the last great bastion however, whenever I use a web app I have to spend a considerable amount of time figuring out where everything will be in the UI, this is even true for things like gmail. Perhaps there will become a defaco standard widget set for web apps?
- joneil 14y ago
  The defacto-standard already seems to be happening with Twitter Bootstrap. Give it another few years and I expect this will spread into more well-known apps (or the current startups using it will become more prominent). And I do think people are addressing the other issues. Chrome's Web-App API can open pages in new windows without the browser UI, and Firefox is due to have their similar API available soon. Things like keyboard shortcuts will likely sort themselves out eventually: for example, Github's issue tracking tries to mirror the keyboard shortcuts of gmail wherever the actions are similar.
monkeyfacebag 14y ago
"As a proponent of what is now called the old school of UI design" Doesn't sound like a very old school to me. vi, emacs and a large portion of popular command line tools came about in an era where devising one's own interface and interface conventions was the only route to actually providing an interface. Desktop environments ameliorated this somewhat, but only for common, generic tasks (copying, pasting, etc.). For any specialized or application-specific tasks it's always been roll-your-own, except that now people are actually thinking about the problem before creating the UI. Consistency is important, but it's not the only factor.
abraxasz 14y ago
I'd like to add a thought: maybe inconsistency in UI design is the only way to experiment and actually improve the current state of design. When Apple released its ipod (with the big wheel in the middle), it was nothing like the other players we were used to. Was it horrible? Was I annoyed by the difference? No, I thought it was cool, and I loved my iPod. Some years later, they did the exact same thing with the iPhone. Completely different, and yet, it set a new standard for design. Now I understand the point of the article, and it's true that it's annoying to see every other small app coming up with new UI conventions. But I guess I'm not too radical about it: if this is the price to pay for innovation in UI design, I'll take it.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Agreed - note some of the most enduring new UI conventions we've come to expect in the last couple of years, all of which were pioneered by third-party apps bucking the trend (even in places where there was already established convention). - Pull down to refresh (where Apple encouraged an explicit refresh button on the bottom of the screen) - Swipe aside views (where Apple encouraged explicit navigation buttons) - Slide aside menus (a la Path, where Apple expected tab bars to fulfill that role) - Fan-out controls (a la Path, where Apple expected the use of drop downs) The list goes on. I for one am happy that some people are unwilling to just follow the tried and true.
- bicknergseng 14y ago
  Beat me to it. On a similar thread imagine if interface design hadn't evolved since the first 5 years of GUIs.
- BadLogInMyAss 14y ago
  The difference is that these experiments involved NEW controls, not NO controls. This fad of hiding everything and leaving users to guess what they're supposed to do defies common sense. I'm trying to get stuff done; I shouldn't be forced to play Myst with the UI.
JVIDEL 14y ago
I remember when there was consistency in UI design: everything looked like Windows95
- zaptheimpaler 14y ago
  :shudder: Good point.
- jamesgeck0 14y ago
  Far more recently, everything looked like Gnome 2. It was nice because I could launch an application I'd never used before and know how various elements would behave. * Certain shortcut keys would be consistent across applications * Other shortcuts would be customizable by hovering over a menu item and pressing the shortcut keys. * Listboxes could be filtered by typing and a little floating textbox would show what I'd typed. * If I was in a dark room and was using a dark theme, I (probably) wouldn't suddenly have a bright white window blinding me. * The file selector for opening/saving files would be standard. * I'd be able to edit things on networked locations open in Nautilus. And so on and so forth. There were all sorts of nice little touches that everything would have just because it was a Gnome 2 application. Going back to Windows XP, it always felt like everything was competing for my attention by being different in assorted inconsistant ways.
  - grecy 14y ago
    One of my favorite things about Mac OS is the extremely consistent shortcut keys across all apps.
- 10098 14y ago
  Actually, Windows 95 looked better than KDE does today. So... yeah, I probably wouldn't mind if my current desktop looked like win95.
ThomPete 14y ago
I think this is missing an important point. The consistency in Android and iPhone is the touch screen. By removing abstraction, by a limited screen real-estate and thus limited scope of applications, I don't believe this is an actual problem. In fact one could say that because of the above, exploration and inconsistency should be encouraged. In the future apps wont be so much about on-screen interaction but rather representing information based on automated real life interaction. (Lots of automation the coming years) The chrome will be all around you and not on the screen. Only the object/content will be on the screen (and the many screens). So sure apps are not UI consistent but neither is a hammer, a schrewdriver and a ruler (i.e. apps)
x1 14y ago
Isn't this the same drum that has been beating since the days of desktop applications... for those old enough to remember when applications where actually run on a desktop OUTSIDE of a web browser ;). Actually... even past the dark ages anyone remember the popularity of webpagesthatsuck.com? No matter what the technology someone will need to do something that is out of the bounds of the 'stock user interface'. So you either account for it by allowing everyone to do anything or you limit it... http://www.useit.com/jakob/constbook_preface_2nded.html http://www.useit.com/jakob/constbook_preface_2nded.html
chris_wot 14y ago
I think he is mourning a problem that needs no solution. Let me put it this way: my wife, who has very little understanding of how to operate computers (to make capital letters, she uses capslock / letter / capslock), literally figured out how to use her iPhone 4 within 4 minutes of turning it on. If the problem with the UI is that it makes it harder to use, then I don't think that consistency is the problem. Lest you believe that I have a sample size of one, I have had my entire family use the iPhone, and they aren't particularly computer/gadget savy. My father, for instance, uses his Nokia "phone book" frequently, however that "phone book" is a taped on list of numbers on the back of his mobile phone. And with a little prompting, he was playing Angry Birds within about 10 minutes. My young daughter, 4 years old, has worked out how to unlock the phone (to my chagrin) and plays "Peppa Pig" at odd hours of the night. If anything, the darned iPhone interface is too easy to use!
WiseWeasel 14y ago
The author is focusing on the wrong details. As long as the workflows and interface element positioning and shape are kept consistent, the visual theme is of little consequence. As long as the back button is on the upper left of your iOS app and has the right shape, it can have zebra stripes for all your user cares.
dredmorbius 14y ago
My "old school" of UI dates back to the 1980s, and through the mid 1990s. To my eye, UI shows elements of program legacy. From Apple (early Mac) to PC (DeskMate, Amiga, MS DOS), early Windows. On the Unix side, a proliferation of X toolkits: Xt, Athena, Xaw, Motif, Tk, gtk, Qt. For desktops, one of the beauties of X is the emulation modes of many window managers -- if you prefer the look and feel of Windows 95, Amiga, BeOS, Motif, CDE, VUE, old-style Mac, Mac Acqua, or any of several dozen other desktops, it's possible to try them out easily. While not all of these emulate deep characteristics of their source GUIs, there are at least some characteristics which are available for review. Even CLI/console tools show their legacy. Emacs draws from TOPS/ITS, mc from DOS via Norton Commander, dd's odd command-line syntax will be familiar to those who've used JCL. Even native Unix/Linux command sets draw from various BSD (short options, single dash, single character) and GNU (long option, double dash, word) formats. More recent commands with a weaker Unix philosophy legacy use a single dash and even MixedCase words (ImageMagick, some disk utilities). While inconsistent among tools, the formats do give me a clue as to what the legacy, and possible behavior, of these tools will be. In the mobile space, minimized UIs are somewhat necessary. Interestingly, several of these were pioneered on Linux (e.g.: Matchbox). This does not mean that there's no room for exploration of useful UI metaphors in a new and highly constrained form factor. Of possible interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits
carsongross 14y ago
I agree that consistency of UI is, broadly, an important part of general usability, but I think that the web has been more unforgivably destructive towards this than mobile, which is a younger and inherently more constrained environment. This is why bootstrap is so important: it gives the consistent look and feel to the web that has been missing for so long.
drcube 14y ago
The thing I hate most about modern UIs is the lack of information. Instead of buttons with text, it's just a whole bunch of mysterious icons. Give me at least some idea of what will happen when I click your icon, and please try and make it look clickable, rather than some background glyphs. Oh, and mobile OSes need to come up with some sort of analog for keyboard shortcuts. Consistency is nice, but usability and discoverability are more important.
- the_bear 14y ago
  Google seems to be worst with this. In addition to having confusing icons, they're not even consistent with themselves. The Gmail archive icon on my Android phone is a picture of a filing cabinet. The archive icon on their main web app is a box with an arrow pointing down. They're two completely different icons for the exact same action.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    They balance that by elsewhere using the same icon for completely different actions, like the sealed envelope that means Compose as well as Mark Unread.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  I guess you'll like that Windows 8's Metro has labels underneath its icons, then.
- dr42 14y ago
  it just doesn't make sense for mobile to have keyboard-shortcuts, the analog would be you touch the button, rather than bringing up a keyboard and typing shift-zz
  - drcube 14y ago
    I'd like something physical I can feel and use muscle memory to remember. Having to search the screen, interpret some obscure glyph and make sure I touch the right spot requires far too much attention for most tasks. Volume down + left swipe to save a file. Camera button + screen tap to go to the app's home screen. Something like that, so I don't have to look. I'm not entirely familiar with screen gestures, but I guess that's the closest analog, so long as they aren't too complicated or picky.
pbreit 14y ago
Thank goodness the sentiment in this rant is not more widespread. The author would prefer that app designers y to avoid from standing out? Good luck with that. And really, is it that bad? Functional apps frequently make good use of prevailing design. And consumer an entertainment apps absolutely should be exploring. The form factor is so limited already that it's much harder to go very far astray.
Xion 14y ago
I couldn't agree more with what this guy is saying. But, mobile applications aren't actually the worst offenders here. At the very least, both platforms have their guidelines for developers to follow if they want to make their apps consistent with the rest of system. And I wouldn't be so sure this is not important: snazzy looks might gain you more installs, but UX that silently and subtly uses established patterns fits more firmly into users' minds and may noticeably increase retention (and thus number of positive reviews). The bigger culprits in terms of violating UI consistency are, I think, web applications. As far as I know, you don't even _have_ any definite guidelines there to begin with, which is of course due to decentralized nature of the web ecosystem. There are some effort that encourage consistency as a side effect (Twitter Bootstrap comes to mind) but the decade-old habits of designing every website completely from scratch do not seem to be dying anytime soon.
- Evbn 14y ago
  But mobile OSes are constantly changing the guidelines. Every new phone has a whole new UI language. Gingerbread, ICS, vendor mods, etc.
mikeryan 14y ago
Can't you make the argument that the web killed consistency in UI design a long time ago? The web has always been a completely blank slate from a UI perspective and what happened was that defacto UI/UX "standards" continue to grow and evolve. Someone will always try to do something completely different. But thats okay it pushes the boundaries a bit. You'll still have a lot of apps that use the consistent tried and true UX methods but some will flaunt these and push where UI can go. Path and the Band Of The Day apps both do this beautifully. Both are non-standard but very easy to navigate.
- Kerrick 14y ago
  I think Twitter Bootstrap and Zurb Foundation are trying to bring some of that consistency back into the Web. Even completely unique applications with their own design and functionality are easy to navigate when they start with these frameworks. For example, Roll20 [http://roll20.net/ http://roll20.net/], an online RPG tabletop, is a full-featured web app that is easy to use even though it's quite complex, partly because they worried about designing a custom UI on the macro scale, leaving the micro scale (buttons, form elements, etc.) to Twitter Bootstrap.
  - mikeryan 14y ago
    I totally agree. The whole idea of responsive design that those types of frameworks promote is exactly the type of defacto standards that arise out of the mishmash of web UI/UX.
- radley 14y ago
  Initially all apps looked and felt different. It wasn't until apps started to live within a window on the desktop that consistency became a popular topic and concern.
  - chipsy 14y ago
    My thoughts exactly. Every piece of software on the 8-bits and prior had a drastically different feel, even given the technical constraints. But in the wake of MacOS and Windows 3.1, "native look" suddenly became a highly-touted feature. I think now that this was a result of low experience with desktop apps leading managers to "fake it till they made it" - presumably the OS makers invested more time in UX than the average app developer, so aping look+feel would get them a little closer to a "good" app.
marckremers 14y ago
An article like this coming from a site that has not updated it's UI in what looks like 6 or 7 years rings alarm bells for me. The UI of the blog is literally looking like a sore thumb, my eyes almost jumped at how different and compressed it looked. I really disagree with this guys thoughts. When I'm in Twitter, I want it to look like 'Twitter'. I want to know I'm in Instagram, or Facebook, and see the difference. Imagine if all apps used the exact same UI solutions. How would innovation happen? It just doesn't make sense on so many levels. Diversity is a good thing.
TorbjornLunde 14y ago
Repost from OSnews comments: This philosophy of putting consistency on this giant pedestal reminds me of the strict non-expressive philosophy of 60s modernist graphic design. They use Helvetica for everything, because Helvetica is neutral, believe that type should never be expressive because the meaning is in the content. Today many like the style, but very few share the philosophy that design should not be expressive. Today graphic design is expressive. You can look at a poster and guess the content based on the typeface, colors, texture, etc. I think we are seeing a similar development in the world of UI design. Having the notes app actually sort-of look like handwritten notes gives people visual cues to what this application and makes it easy to understand. I would not be surprised if such visual cues makes the app disappear than a pure consistent app would. These apps are only different visually, in behavior they are often very consistent. You also have apps that take things much futher, such as Convertbot, Clear or Paper. I think breaking UI conventions is completely acceptable if they make the experience better. Personally I find Paper to be far more invisible than the other more consistent sketching-apps for iPad. I think there is more than enough room for both philosophies (and everything between). Vote with your wallet and buy the apps that work well for you.
- Someone 14y ago
  Additionally, there is the argument that today's users are way more familiar with the language of UIs. Because of that, some bandwidth that used to be necessary to drive home the message "this is what you can do here" can be used for other purposes. And for those wondering about whether that "more familiar" argument has merit: the same has happened in movies. Nowadays, everyone can follow what happens in a movie if, in a scene immediately following one shot in the New York office, a shop owner has a slight French accent. In early movies, such a change required intermediate scenes showing someone taking a cab to the airport (and saying "to the airport" to the driver), getting in a plane, getting out of the plane, etc.
- BadLogInMyAss 14y ago
  Bunk. This is a functional problem, caused by intentional obscurity. This is a replay of the "skinning" fad of 10 or more years ago, which thankfully died on the desktop. A great example is this ridiculous Clear list-making app for the iPhone that pointlessly eschews listviews and disclosure indicators in favor of... nothing. You're supposed to guess at what to pinch or swipe, and there no visible difference between and individual item and a collection. UI failure.
eragnew 14y ago
I would argue that innovation and trying new things are always a net positive. If you give it enough time (i.e. on a long enough timeline). Because new standards and best practices emerge. New standards and best practices that are better than the previous standards and best practices. Yes, it requires effort and debate to get to that point. But it's better than becoming stale and irrelevant, IMO. In fact, I think a new set of best practices is already emerging in mobile app development. You just have to know where to look.
shalmanese 14y ago
I think it's just a matter of the rapid pace of innovation in the mobile space right now. The common pattern in innovation is to diverge and then converge. We're already seeing the convergence around a couple of paradigms like pull down to refresh and sidebar menus and we're going to see more of them as we slowly figure out what's the best solution to a design problem.
quattrofan 14y ago
Not a bad article but I dont believe this is the big issue that he makes out. Mobile apps far less sophisticated than desktop, I have a Galaxy Nexus and sure there are differences between apps and between things like where the Menu icon is. The reality is though that you figure them out, it takes an extra second or so first time you use the app, its not the end of the world.
batista 14y ago
>It's been one of my major pet peeves on both Android and iOS: the total and utter lack of consistency. Applications - whether first party or third party - all seem to live on islands, doing their own thing, making their own design choices regarding basic UI interactions, developing their own non-standard buttons and controls. Consistency died five years ago, and nobody seems to care but me. Yes, it's called evolution. As the saying goes, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". The consistency he asks for is that foolish consistency --where e.g buttons all look the same, all colors match, applications have a cookie cutter look, etc. I.e strictly following some platform's design guidelines. Not only that would KILL development of new UI concept (a lot of widely adopted ideas come from some app experimenting with new look&feel ideas), it would also make any OS look drab and boring. Consistency that should matter would be more like: drag and drop works everywhere it should, text copy/paste plays well from app to app (remember KDE/Gnome/Motif/what have you around 2005? I hope it's better nowadays), keyboard shortcuts are respected, etc. Generally, controls should MOSTLY work the same (with the provision for experimentation from the occasional app). As for things like the color of the toolbar, the look of buttons, etc? Not so much.
jinushaun 14y ago
I for one am glad that Tweetie, Path and Facebook broke iOS UI conventions and innovated. Pull to refresh, stacking views, swipe to show options, FB's peak-a-boo home screen, etc. If not for these innovations, we'd all be stuck in tedious UINavigationController and drab UITableView hell. Everything would look like the Settings app.
indubitably 14y ago
Anal.

83 points by thomholwerda 14y ago

jiggy2011 14y ago

This is going to be a serious problem for the adoption of web apps. Current problems with web apps are things like lack of keyboard shortcuts (without the browser getting in the way). Browser chrome wasting space in the UI and an overall more "laggy" feeling than a native app. All of these problems however can (have?) be improved upon. UI consistency will be the last great bastion however, whenever I use a web app I have to spend a considerable amount of time figuring out where everything will be in the UI, this is even true for things like gmail. Perhaps there will become a defaco standard widget set for web apps?

joneil 14y ago
The defacto-standard already seems to be happening with Twitter Bootstrap. Give it another few years and I expect this will spread into more well-known apps (or the current startups using it will become more prominent). And I do think people are addressing the other issues. Chrome's Web-App API can open pages in new windows without the browser UI, and Firefox is due to have their similar API available soon. Things like keyboard shortcuts will likely sort themselves out eventually: for example, Github's issue tracking tries to mirror the keyboard shortcuts of gmail wherever the actions are similar.

monkeyfacebag 14y ago

"As a proponent of what is now called the old school of UI design" Doesn't sound like a very old school to me. vi, emacs and a large portion of popular command line tools came about in an era where devising one's own interface and interface conventions was the only route to actually providing an interface. Desktop environments ameliorated this somewhat, but only for common, generic tasks (copying, pasting, etc.). For any specialized or application-specific tasks it's always been roll-your-own, except that now people are actually thinking about the problem before creating the UI. Consistency is important, but it's not the only factor.

abraxasz 14y ago

I'd like to add a thought: maybe inconsistency in UI design is the only way to experiment and actually improve the current state of design. When Apple released its ipod (with the big wheel in the middle), it was nothing like the other players we were used to. Was it horrible? Was I annoyed by the difference? No, I thought it was cool, and I loved my iPod. Some years later, they did the exact same thing with the iPhone. Completely different, and yet, it set a new standard for design. Now I understand the point of the article, and it's true that it's annoying to see every other small app coming up with new UI conventions. But I guess I'm not too radical about it: if this is the price to pay for innovation in UI design, I'll take it.

potatolicious 14y ago
Agreed - note some of the most enduring new UI conventions we've come to expect in the last couple of years, all of which were pioneered by third-party apps bucking the trend (even in places where there was already established convention). - Pull down to refresh (where Apple encouraged an explicit refresh button on the bottom of the screen) - Swipe aside views (where Apple encouraged explicit navigation buttons) - Slide aside menus (a la Path, where Apple expected tab bars to fulfill that role) - Fan-out controls (a la Path, where Apple expected the use of drop downs) The list goes on. I for one am happy that some people are unwilling to just follow the tried and true.
bicknergseng 14y ago
Beat me to it. On a similar thread imagine if interface design hadn't evolved since the first 5 years of GUIs.
BadLogInMyAss 14y ago
The difference is that these experiments involved NEW controls, not NO controls. This fad of hiding everything and leaving users to guess what they're supposed to do defies common sense. I'm trying to get stuff done; I shouldn't be forced to play Myst with the UI.

JVIDEL 14y ago

I remember when there was consistency in UI design: everything looked like Windows95

zaptheimpaler 14y ago
:shudder: Good point.
jamesgeck0 14y ago
Far more recently, everything looked like Gnome 2. It was nice because I could launch an application I'd never used before and know how various elements would behave. * Certain shortcut keys would be consistent across applications * Other shortcuts would be customizable by hovering over a menu item and pressing the shortcut keys. * Listboxes could be filtered by typing and a little floating textbox would show what I'd typed. * If I was in a dark room and was using a dark theme, I (probably) wouldn't suddenly have a bright white window blinding me. * The file selector for opening/saving files would be standard. * I'd be able to edit things on networked locations open in Nautilus. And so on and so forth. There were all sorts of nice little touches that everything would have just because it was a Gnome 2 application. Going back to Windows XP, it always felt like everything was competing for my attention by being different in assorted inconsistant ways.
- grecy 14y ago
  One of my favorite things about Mac OS is the extremely consistent shortcut keys across all apps.
10098 14y ago
Actually, Windows 95 looked better than KDE does today. So... yeah, I probably wouldn't mind if my current desktop looked like win95.

ThomPete 14y ago

I think this is missing an important point. The consistency in Android and iPhone is the touch screen. By removing abstraction, by a limited screen real-estate and thus limited scope of applications, I don't believe this is an actual problem. In fact one could say that because of the above, exploration and inconsistency should be encouraged. In the future apps wont be so much about on-screen interaction but rather representing information based on automated real life interaction. (Lots of automation the coming years) The chrome will be all around you and not on the screen. Only the object/content will be on the screen (and the many screens). So sure apps are not UI consistent but neither is a hammer, a schrewdriver and a ruler (i.e. apps)

x1 14y ago

Isn't this the same drum that has been beating since the days of desktop applications... for those old enough to remember when applications where actually run on a desktop OUTSIDE of a web browser ;). Actually... even past the dark ages anyone remember the popularity of webpagesthatsuck.com? No matter what the technology someone will need to do something that is out of the bounds of the 'stock user interface'. So you either account for it by allowing everyone to do anything or you limit it... http://www.useit.com/jakob/constbook_preface_2nded.html http://www.useit.com/jakob/constbook_preface_2nded.html

chris_wot 14y ago

I think he is mourning a problem that needs no solution. Let me put it this way: my wife, who has very little understanding of how to operate computers (to make capital letters, she uses capslock / letter / capslock), literally figured out how to use her iPhone 4 within 4 minutes of turning it on. If the problem with the UI is that it makes it harder to use, then I don't think that consistency is the problem. Lest you believe that I have a sample size of one, I have had my entire family use the iPhone, and they aren't particularly computer/gadget savy. My father, for instance, uses his Nokia "phone book" frequently, however that "phone book" is a taped on list of numbers on the back of his mobile phone. And with a little prompting, he was playing Angry Birds within about 10 minutes. My young daughter, 4 years old, has worked out how to unlock the phone (to my chagrin) and plays "Peppa Pig" at odd hours of the night. If anything, the darned iPhone interface is too easy to use!

WiseWeasel 14y ago

The author is focusing on the wrong details. As long as the workflows and interface element positioning and shape are kept consistent, the visual theme is of little consequence. As long as the back button is on the upper left of your iOS app and has the right shape, it can have zebra stripes for all your user cares.

dredmorbius 14y ago

My "old school" of UI dates back to the 1980s, and through the mid 1990s. To my eye, UI shows elements of program legacy. From Apple (early Mac) to PC (DeskMate, Amiga, MS DOS), early Windows. On the Unix side, a proliferation of X toolkits: Xt, Athena, Xaw, Motif, Tk, gtk, Qt. For desktops, one of the beauties of X is the emulation modes of many window managers -- if you prefer the look and feel of Windows 95, Amiga, BeOS, Motif, CDE, VUE, old-style Mac, Mac Acqua, or any of several dozen other desktops, it's possible to try them out easily. While not all of these emulate deep characteristics of their source GUIs, there are at least some characteristics which are available for review. Even CLI/console tools show their legacy. Emacs draws from TOPS/ITS, mc from DOS via Norton Commander, dd's odd command-line syntax will be familiar to those who've used JCL. Even native Unix/Linux command sets draw from various BSD (short options, single dash, single character) and GNU (long option, double dash, word) formats. More recent commands with a weaker Unix philosophy legacy use a single dash and even MixedCase words (ImageMagick, some disk utilities). While inconsistent among tools, the formats do give me a clue as to what the legacy, and possible behavior, of these tools will be. In the mobile space, minimized UIs are somewhat necessary. Interestingly, several of these were pioneered on Linux (e.g.: Matchbox). This does not mean that there's no room for exploration of useful UI metaphors in a new and highly constrained form factor. Of possible interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits

carsongross 14y ago

I agree that consistency of UI is, broadly, an important part of general usability, but I think that the web has been more unforgivably destructive towards this than mobile, which is a younger and inherently more constrained environment. This is why bootstrap is so important: it gives the consistent look and feel to the web that has been missing for so long.

drcube 14y ago

The thing I hate most about modern UIs is the lack of information. Instead of buttons with text, it's just a whole bunch of mysterious icons. Give me at least some idea of what will happen when I click your icon, and please try and make it look clickable, rather than some background glyphs. Oh, and mobile OSes need to come up with some sort of analog for keyboard shortcuts. Consistency is nice, but usability and discoverability are more important.

the_bear 14y ago
Google seems to be worst with this. In addition to having confusing icons, they're not even consistent with themselves. The Gmail archive icon on my Android phone is a picture of a filing cabinet. The archive icon on their main web app is a box with an arrow pointing down. They're two completely different icons for the exact same action.
- Evbn 14y ago
  They balance that by elsewhere using the same icon for completely different actions, like the sealed envelope that means Compose as well as Mark Unread.
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
I guess you'll like that Windows 8's Metro has labels underneath its icons, then.
dr42 14y ago
it just doesn't make sense for mobile to have keyboard-shortcuts, the analog would be you touch the button, rather than bringing up a keyboard and typing shift-zz
- drcube 14y ago
  I'd like something physical I can feel and use muscle memory to remember. Having to search the screen, interpret some obscure glyph and make sure I touch the right spot requires far too much attention for most tasks. Volume down + left swipe to save a file. Camera button + screen tap to go to the app's home screen. Something like that, so I don't have to look. I'm not entirely familiar with screen gestures, but I guess that's the closest analog, so long as they aren't too complicated or picky.

pbreit 14y ago

Thank goodness the sentiment in this rant is not more widespread. The author would prefer that app designers y to avoid from standing out? Good luck with that. And really, is it that bad? Functional apps frequently make good use of prevailing design. And consumer an entertainment apps absolutely should be exploring. The form factor is so limited already that it's much harder to go very far astray.

Xion 14y ago

I couldn't agree more with what this guy is saying. But, mobile applications aren't actually the worst offenders here. At the very least, both platforms have their guidelines for developers to follow if they want to make their apps consistent with the rest of system. And I wouldn't be so sure this is not important: snazzy looks might gain you more installs, but UX that silently and subtly uses established patterns fits more firmly into users' minds and may noticeably increase retention (and thus number of positive reviews). The bigger culprits in terms of violating UI consistency are, I think, web applications. As far as I know, you don't even _have_ any definite guidelines there to begin with, which is of course due to decentralized nature of the web ecosystem. There are some effort that encourage consistency as a side effect (Twitter Bootstrap comes to mind) but the decade-old habits of designing every website completely from scratch do not seem to be dying anytime soon.

Evbn 14y ago
But mobile OSes are constantly changing the guidelines. Every new phone has a whole new UI language. Gingerbread, ICS, vendor mods, etc.

mikeryan 14y ago

Can't you make the argument that the web killed consistency in UI design a long time ago? The web has always been a completely blank slate from a UI perspective and what happened was that defacto UI/UX "standards" continue to grow and evolve. Someone will always try to do something completely different. But thats okay it pushes the boundaries a bit. You'll still have a lot of apps that use the consistent tried and true UX methods but some will flaunt these and push where UI can go. Path and the Band Of The Day apps both do this beautifully. Both are non-standard but very easy to navigate.

Kerrick 14y ago
I think Twitter Bootstrap and Zurb Foundation are trying to bring some of that consistency back into the Web. Even completely unique applications with their own design and functionality are easy to navigate when they start with these frameworks. For example, Roll20 [http://roll20.net/ http://roll20.net/], an online RPG tabletop, is a full-featured web app that is easy to use even though it's quite complex, partly because they worried about designing a custom UI on the macro scale, leaving the micro scale (buttons, form elements, etc.) to Twitter Bootstrap.
- mikeryan 14y ago
  I totally agree. The whole idea of responsive design that those types of frameworks promote is exactly the type of defacto standards that arise out of the mishmash of web UI/UX.
radley 14y ago
Initially all apps looked and felt different. It wasn't until apps started to live within a window on the desktop that consistency became a popular topic and concern.
- chipsy 14y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Every piece of software on the 8-bits and prior had a drastically different feel, even given the technical constraints. But in the wake of MacOS and Windows 3.1, "native look" suddenly became a highly-touted feature. I think now that this was a result of low experience with desktop apps leading managers to "fake it till they made it" - presumably the OS makers invested more time in UX than the average app developer, so aping look+feel would get them a little closer to a "good" app.

marckremers 14y ago

An article like this coming from a site that has not updated it's UI in what looks like 6 or 7 years rings alarm bells for me. The UI of the blog is literally looking like a sore thumb, my eyes almost jumped at how different and compressed it looked. I really disagree with this guys thoughts. When I'm in Twitter, I want it to look like 'Twitter'. I want to know I'm in Instagram, or Facebook, and see the difference. Imagine if all apps used the exact same UI solutions. How would innovation happen? It just doesn't make sense on so many levels. Diversity is a good thing.

TorbjornLunde 14y ago

Repost from OSnews comments: This philosophy of putting consistency on this giant pedestal reminds me of the strict non-expressive philosophy of 60s modernist graphic design. They use Helvetica for everything, because Helvetica is neutral, believe that type should never be expressive because the meaning is in the content. Today many like the style, but very few share the philosophy that design should not be expressive. Today graphic design is expressive. You can look at a poster and guess the content based on the typeface, colors, texture, etc. I think we are seeing a similar development in the world of UI design. Having the notes app actually sort-of look like handwritten notes gives people visual cues to what this application and makes it easy to understand. I would not be surprised if such visual cues makes the app disappear than a pure consistent app would. These apps are only different visually, in behavior they are often very consistent. You also have apps that take things much futher, such as Convertbot, Clear or Paper. I think breaking UI conventions is completely acceptable if they make the experience better. Personally I find Paper to be far more invisible than the other more consistent sketching-apps for iPad. I think there is more than enough room for both philosophies (and everything between). Vote with your wallet and buy the apps that work well for you.

Someone 14y ago
Additionally, there is the argument that today's users are way more familiar with the language of UIs. Because of that, some bandwidth that used to be necessary to drive home the message "this is what you can do here" can be used for other purposes. And for those wondering about whether that "more familiar" argument has merit: the same has happened in movies. Nowadays, everyone can follow what happens in a movie if, in a scene immediately following one shot in the New York office, a shop owner has a slight French accent. In early movies, such a change required intermediate scenes showing someone taking a cab to the airport (and saying "to the airport" to the driver), getting in a plane, getting out of the plane, etc.
BadLogInMyAss 14y ago
Bunk. This is a functional problem, caused by intentional obscurity. This is a replay of the "skinning" fad of 10 or more years ago, which thankfully died on the desktop. A great example is this ridiculous Clear list-making app for the iPhone that pointlessly eschews listviews and disclosure indicators in favor of... nothing. You're supposed to guess at what to pinch or swipe, and there no visible difference between and individual item and a collection. UI failure.

eragnew 14y ago

I would argue that innovation and trying new things are always a net positive. If you give it enough time (i.e. on a long enough timeline). Because new standards and best practices emerge. New standards and best practices that are better than the previous standards and best practices. Yes, it requires effort and debate to get to that point. But it's better than becoming stale and irrelevant, IMO. In fact, I think a new set of best practices is already emerging in mobile app development. You just have to know where to look.

shalmanese 14y ago

I think it's just a matter of the rapid pace of innovation in the mobile space right now. The common pattern in innovation is to diverge and then converge. We're already seeing the convergence around a couple of paradigms like pull down to refresh and sidebar menus and we're going to see more of them as we slowly figure out what's the best solution to a design problem.

quattrofan 14y ago

Not a bad article but I dont believe this is the big issue that he makes out. Mobile apps far less sophisticated than desktop, I have a Galaxy Nexus and sure there are differences between apps and between things like where the Menu icon is. The reality is though that you figure them out, it takes an extra second or so first time you use the app, its not the end of the world.

batista 14y ago

>It's been one of my major pet peeves on both Android and iOS: the total and utter lack of consistency. Applications - whether first party or third party - all seem to live on islands, doing their own thing, making their own design choices regarding basic UI interactions, developing their own non-standard buttons and controls. Consistency died five years ago, and nobody seems to care but me. Yes, it's called evolution. As the saying goes, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". The consistency he asks for is that foolish consistency --where e.g buttons all look the same, all colors match, applications have a cookie cutter look, etc. I.e strictly following some platform's design guidelines. Not only that would KILL development of new UI concept (a lot of widely adopted ideas come from some app experimenting with new look&feel ideas), it would also make any OS look drab and boring. Consistency that should matter would be more like: drag and drop works everywhere it should, text copy/paste plays well from app to app (remember KDE/Gnome/Motif/what have you around 2005? I hope it's better nowadays), keyboard shortcuts are respected, etc. Generally, controls should MOSTLY work the same (with the provision for experimentation from the occasional app). As for things like the color of the toolbar, the look of buttons, etc? Not so much.

jinushaun 14y ago

I for one am glad that Tweetie, Path and Facebook broke iOS UI conventions and innovated. Pull to refresh, stacking views, swipe to show options, FB's peak-a-boo home screen, etc. If not for these innovations, we'd all be stuck in tedious UINavigationController and drab UITableView hell. Everything would look like the Settings app.

indubitably 14y ago

Anal.