Avalon, Sparkle, UI Design
This quote on Slashdot sums up my thoughts on this:
That’s right folks, no more of that annoying consistency between GUI applications, now anything that the guy down in marketing can draw is a workable GUI – just think of the possibilities. Microsoft is not a believer in consistent elegant or intuitive GUIs, Micorosoft is all about empowering developers, and graphic designers, and wackjobs with no aesthetic sense. You too can finally design and implement that stunning piece of GUI genius you always imagined.
Microsoft has clearly switched from a world where GUI consistency was encouraged, to a world where “emotional connection” and creativity and branding are encouraged.
This is good if your graphic designers are good application designers, but in all but the best companies, they’re not.
In the past, we could point to some guidelines, list all the reasons we should stick to the guidelines, and override the guy who wanted to have the menus at the bottom of the window instead of the top (for no reason other than that it’d be cool and different).
Now? That sort of cool and different is encouraged. It’s a great day for graphic designers, and a great day for users of software developed by the very small number of companies with great graphic designers, but maybe a bad day for everyone else.
September 16th, 2005 at 5:40 pm
Don’t you think that the consistency argument has been moot for years already? The web has become the biggest part of most people’s computing experience, and consistency has been the exception rather than the rule ever since Netscape was in alpha. Are there a lot of poorly designed websites? Yes. Are there lots of opportunities for talented designers to make them better. Yes. As a designer, I’m happy about that.
On the other hand, at least with Avalon, keyboard access, accessibility, etc. works like Windows is supposed to. After all, consistency of behavior is more important than visual consistency.
September 17th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
No. I’ve heard that argument, but I don’t buy it. There are real benefits to having consistency in design.
Failure to convert stuff in a shopping cart on a website into a completed sale is tied to the quality of the site – I’ve seen reports of sites redesigning their shopping cart and checkout process and seeing 50% increases in their conversion rate.
What does this mean? It means their customers were having problems with the user interface of their prior cart.
If a web shopping cart was treated with the human interface guideline respect that a typical Windows application receives, then this would never have been a huge problem.
I’ve seen people try to use eBay and give up. It’s user interface sucks.
When a user fires up a new Windows application, chances are they already know how most of it works, and they only have to figure out the things that are unique to the work that this particular app does. They already know how to print, how to open a file, how to use the clipboard, and so on.
We’re moving from trying to make applications that users can feel comfortable with, to applications that users will think are cool. But cool doesn’t equal usable.
You’re a designer, so of course you’re happy about that. But will your users be?