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ranap · Joined: 28 Aug 2007 Posts: 13

what are Problems with UI Guidelines and Consistency ?

sachdeva · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 25

As an application designer, following UI guidelines might help ensure that the product you give your users allows them to apply skills they’ve already learned to common tasks and learn new tasks more easily. However, you cannot rely solely on guidelines to ensure the usability of your product. UI guidelines are often too general. On the one hand, to be guidelines they must be somewhat general. Yet it’s that very generality that makes them difficult to apply. When you are trying to make specific decisions within the context of your product, a general set of guidelines might not give you enough information for you to make a decision.

Nevertheless, when designing an application, visual consistency can be helpful. Consider the consistency you find in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. The user interfaces in these software products are very similar in the basic elements such as menus, toolbars, and placement of buttons in dialog boxes—the surface-level interface. In addition, they are consistent in how they handle many common tasks: formatting text, saving files, and so on.

Consistency in these and other elements can make it easier for users to transfer skills when learning different applications. Specific UI guidelines help maintain consistency across different products, but consistency by itself is not the ultimate goal.

These problems really boil down to context: You need to be able to design the user interface for your specific users, goals, and tasks. Guidelines may be a reasonable starting point, but they are only a starting point. The value in UI consistency lies in effective learning, by making it easy to transfer knowledge from another product. However, sometimes ease of learning can get in the way of ease of use.