Consistency without becoming a hobgoblin
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Rob Rhyne (UPA-DC 2007)
Rhyne’s talk was about using common design patterns and everyday metaphors to achieve consistent and usable interfaces without demanding strict uniformity. He says uniformity is problematic if it is being invoked to justify a design that is one of the following:
- easier to build but is actually less useful,
- a substitute for a more useful creative solution, or
- when it simply results in something that is boring and undistinguished.
He showed Google search results, Yahoo search results, and Microsoft Live search results and without the header these look nearly identical, but the two catch up searches really need to distinguish themselves visually without breaking the understandability. Conventions can be broken when they are immediately obvious. He cited successful examples that broke away from conventions: the iPhone interface and a CD burner called disco that uses drifting smoke on the desktop to indicate that it is still working while allowing the user to do other stuff.
An audience member working for a medical site told a story about trying to develop websites of information for diabetics and for breast cancer survivors. The pointy haired bosses (ooh that’s me) wanted uniformity, but these two communities are actually very different in how they approach finding information (no details given unfortunately). I retell that story, because I think it has some parallels with our communities of authors and readers. The Connexions stylesheets were the first design for allowing communities to relate to content as communities. The stylesheets controlled the entire look and feel of the navigation, content, CNX and branding which turned out to be very hard to understand for readers, and difficult to maintain for development. We are now moving toward supporting styling in the content area, but preserving CNX navigation. We plan to provide style parameters that can be applied by module authors, collection authors, lens makers, and readers (in that order). Will that be enough? And will it really be easier to maintain?
Rhyne gave a couple of suggested references:- Yahoo! Pattern Library
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns - “Web Patterns”, John Allsopp
http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2005/11/webpattenrs_and.html - Flickr Design Pattern Photo pool
