Saturday, March 10th @ 11:30 am
Paul Schreiber Screen Real Estate Agent, Apple
Jennifer Fraser Lead User Experience Designer, Corel Corporation
Alex Graveley Sr Engineer, VMware Inc
Steve Johnson Sr User Experience Mgr, Adobe Systems Inc
What is consistency?
menu commands differnt names/commands for same thing
usps postal machine
voiting machines
consistency for consistency sake is bad – where in the workflow should this happen? (Adobe)
brand important – user by user & workflow by workflow
consistency is just a guideline – always a moving target because things are always changing
visual consistency sometimes and extra consistency between similar aps
Costs of inconsistency
expectation that things work the same way (focus, drag/drop, open, save, close)
Make users feel comfortable and create a brand.
Adobe lightroom, new design, but keep some of photoshop consistencies
difficult between different platforms
Adobe gets calls whenever they remove something – elements remove undo/redo buttons highest call volumes. It can hit the bottom line.
There needs to be a reason for the change – customer needs to know/see/feel that reason – the benefit of the change is immediately clear.
Goals
goals for company and goals for user
consistency greatly improves usability – pickup discoverability, at some point you must evolve
features not important – goals important
how to make a clean break to make a change (no floppy on macs) – it’s easier when there is a new product, you have freedom to rethinkg some of the old descisions
see what the customer is doing and make those breaks on what they need or what they are trying to do with current/old versions and look where things are migrating to in the first place
Achieving constency
create buffer between what you are doing and your source of inspiration – useing ipod control and it doesn’t perform exactly like ipod control throws off users
user needs, what is workflow of your user and what are their needs? workflows for everyone are different even doing the same things
find lowest common denominator between all users
focus on the target users for your app
Ask the user what they are almost always fails because you end up removing features and pigionhole the users w/labels – find a way to unveil features based on usage
Crossing platforms
How much to you make it like native platoform or like a competitor product on the same platform?
how it looks and how it works – pick up patterns that os already has and leverage those. stylistic differents, little visual cues make sure if feels like it is supposed to be on that platform
web is more difficult because there aren’t any base guidelines like w/an os – good/bad, easier to implement, but can be across the board
Accessibility (508)
Inconsistencies make it harder to be accessible, accessibility makes a good tool to bring consistency