Dangers of naive consistency
Exhorting software developers to make user interfaces “consistent” is
somewhat risky: it could do harm as well as good. Why? Because, consistency is a more complex concept than many people realize. In particular, consistency is:
■ Difficult to define:Many experts have tried without success.
■ Multidimensional:Items that are consistent in one dimension (e.g., function)
may be inconsistent in another (e.g., location).
■ Subject to interpretation:What seems consistent to one person may seem inconsistent to another.
Some designers either are unaware that users might see things differently or believe that they can define consistency for users. Some astonishingly bad designs have been produced in the name of consistency. Examples include software applications in which everything is controlled by data entry forms, or by hierarchies of menus, even though forms or menus may not be the best way to control all the functions. Grudin [1989] even suggests that consistency is so ill defined and easy to misapply that it should be abandoned as a UI design principle.
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