The reason for being consistent is to improve usability. If you are using the word "or" you have a problem.
Try asking the stakeholders why they want to be consistent. If it's for the sake of consistency, that's a circular argument and their brains have turned off. Time for an intervention. In the case of social networks, Randy Farmer just gave an excellent talk that suggested mindless consistency is death, and context is king http://thefarmers.org/Habitat/2008/10/context_is_king_lessons_from_o.html It's like simplicity; be as consistent as possible and no more. If you had to choose between being appropriate and consistent which would you choose? Also excellent: the downside of standardization (a.k.a. consistency) http://www.graphpaper.com/2007/02-05_the-holy-grail-of-information-architecture On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Jeff Noyes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I recognize that some things in the UI should remain consistent - like an > interaction model. But often a deviation is required - ironically for the > sake of usability. Maybe you need to enlarge a button to emphasize it's > importance, or maybe the interaction model that worked 80% of the time > falls > down in some cases. For me, deviation is a battle with stakeholders > outside > of design. They want everything consistent. Because hey, consistency > equals > usability. > > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
