So the questions is: Should Chandler look the same on all platforms?
Thankfully, several people have already pointed out that the visual
design of the interface has less to do with the application's overall
usability than other aspects of the design: namely, its information
architecture (labeling and navigation) and interaction design
(behavior).
When people talk about "look and feel," they are usually only
thinking about the visual design. The visual design, which includes
the overall look of the interface, but also specific things like
placement of buttons, really only addresses the "look." The "feel" is
determined by how the application behaves when you're using it. (My
take on this appears to be out of alignment with Mimi's - she says
"basic interaction" includes "placement of Okay, Cancel buttons..." I
argue that placement is also visual design.)
If you design an interface using standard widgets, you cannot
innovate in area the visual design. That is, unless you change the
way the application behaves, all you're doing is skinning and
skinning is not innovation. My friend, Jef Raskin, used to have this
problem with clients. They'd say, "We want the best designed
application on the market, but it has to work just like Microsoft
Office." You cannot make a better interface by copying what's already
out there.
Ok, before I get way off track, my point is this: in terms of
usability, Chandler's visual design is less important than the other
aspects of its design.
Given that this is not an issue of usability, the decision of whether
or not to make Chandler look the same across all platforms is really
a marketing decision that should be driven by these concerns:
a. How much it costs the OSAF to develop it one way or the other
b. How user adoption rates will be affected by the decision
(whether users prefer it one way of the other)
c. How organizational adoption rates will be affected by the
decision (for example, an IT group may prefer it to be the same on
all platforms because it costs less to support that way)
Am I missing anything?
Brad Lauster
http://bradlauster.com/
On Nov 17, 2005, at 2:54 PM, Philippe Bossut wrote:
Lisa Dusseault wrote:
On Nov 17, 2005, at 12:28 PM, Nicholas Bastin wrote:
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.
I think the exact details of the sameness/uniqueness matter
greatly. Some examples from my own experience are use of hotkeys
vs. style. E.g. it drives me batty that the Office applications
on Mac don't use the same hot keys as Mac apps. The one that gets
me all the time is the command-G for "find next". This isn't
apparent at all when you look at the apps but only when you use
them. On the other hand, visual-only differences and application-
specific differences don't matter to me. I hadn't noticed until
just now which of my applications are what I think is called
"brushed metal" style and which aren't. It doesn't theoretically
matter that Firefox has tabs and Terminal doesn't -- except that
Firefox has habituated me to the command-T shortcut for creating a
new "view" and Terminal brings up the font dialog when I hit
command-T.
+1 on Nicolas and Lisa's comments: what matters is behavior, not
really look.
Note however that even when using Ajax, most of the commands
(handled by the browser) are platform specific (cut/paste, save,
contextual menus, etc...) so you can develop crossplatform without
investing too much in coding for platform idiosyncrasies. But it
all depends of the framework you use. Browsers are indeed pretty
good frameworks (albeit limitated). But check out X11 for instance:
I'm still getting caught when using WingIDE on my Mac by Ctrl-C/V
instead of Cmd-C/V... The fact it's the same controls than on
Windows (which I rarely use) is of little solace.
For a desktop app, there's more to worry about: drag and drop,
themes, accessibility. Most of these are platform specific and
really important for users. It's not so much about consistency than
it is about interoperability (between apps running on the same
platform). That may not matter for iTunes but it will surely matter
for a PIM like Chandler.
Cheers,
- Philippe
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
