This is probably becoming an increasingly personal issue. I would
venture to say that most of the people I know regularly use multiple
platforms and this spans a range of 20-something Gen Y-ers to people
in their 50s and 60s. None are technical.
There's really two levels of "native platform" look and feel to be
considered here.
1. One has to do with visual design and layout.
2. The other has to do with basic interaction: ie. Placement of Okay,
Cancel buttons, Keyboard shortcuts, Click semantics, etc.
I think there is more flexibility for innovation in the area of 1
than there is in 2.
I think we would all agree that there's no point in futzing around
with keyboard shortcuts, but we shouldn't assume that pushing the
envelope on #1 is out of the question. Microsoft itself has to
violate their own standards in order to make any progress on their
special purpose apps. The people who design and come up with the
guidelines for the OS simply cannot accommodate and anticipate every
workflow and specific use case that will be addressed in the future
in specific apps. Sticking too religiously to UI guidelines when
there are very good reasons to stray from them is simply a formula
for stifling innovation and progress.
(Also, many times, situations that designers ad developers feel are
"the same" are actually very different for users. We're too close to
the software to realize that a lot of the "similarities" we perceive
across use cases are imperceptible to the user, who is more focused
on the specific task they would like to accomplish.)
When I first interviewed at OSAF almost 3 years ago, I remember the
conversation that kept coming up over and over again was, why after
all this time and all this progress in technology, has UI lagged
behind? Why are we still stuck in the same metaphors and UI
affordances for two decades?
Well one reason is that one of the earliest innovations in UI was:
keep all UIs in lockstep. Don't change things. Don't make things
different.
Which has its benefits, but also has serious costs.
This approach was also born of an age when basically nobody knew how
to use a computer and almost everyone assumed that in order to learn
a new piece of software you needed to take a class or at least read a
book.
Compare this to people who are in their teens today who would never
even dream of looking at a FAQ, much less get "instruction" on how to
use software before delving straight into it.
With interaction so cheaply gained, perhaps over time, people's sense
of comfort zone won't be so narrow anymore?
Mimi :o)
On Nov 17, 2005, at 12:28 PM, Nicholas Bastin wrote:
On Nov 16, 2005, at 3:13 PM, Daniel Vareika wrote:
To all,
I personally know the reason why at OSAF you have chosen to stick
to "THE" UI of each platform, but that was long ago (2 years
aprox) and day to day we are seeing more apps with a unique UI
regardless of platform. Back then it made sense not to put a
hindrance (or another one) to the user.
Today, we are seeing apps that look the same regardless of their
platform.
iTunes for example.
iTunes is, relatively speaking, a terrible example. iTunes for
windows does not look or behave like a windows app. To the extent
that this doesn't bother users, it is because iTunes is a *very*
simple application. If you had Apple Mail, or iCal, on windows, in
the same shoddy way that the iTunes UI was ported, no one would
want to use them. Yes, they're great UIs on the mac, and the
usability is excellent, but they're completely out of place on
win32 - they would violate a huge number of Microsoft Human
Interface guidelines (not the least of which being "ok" and
"cancel" button placement).
You should strive to make your application fit in on the platform
you intend it to be run on. You shouldn't create your own look and
feel and then replicate that across platforms, because that takes
the user out of their "comfort zone" with their applications.
For the future, wouldn´t it be nice that Chandler had a unique UI
regardless of platform?
When I sit down at my computer, I expect that all applications will
look, and, more importantly, *behave* the same way. The reason for
this is that 95% of computer users don't ever use more than one
operating system. You provide them no benefit by making Chandler
look and behave the same across platforms, while confusing them on
the platforms where Chandler would not behave like normal
applications.
--
Nick
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