Thursday, May 30, 2019

The most important consistency is consistency with user expectations. (Bill Buxton)

So, internal consistency is definitely important. And consistency to standards is huge as well.

But there is one final consistency to keep in mind. And that is consistency with the user’s mental model and with their own actual experiences. And that consistency just so happens to trump all others.

Let me give you an example. I work a fair amount with mobile teams. And, for some reason or other, those teams include a lot of Apple fan boys and girls. Whatever the issue, everyone always seems to defer to Apple standards – even when those standards are woefully inadequate or just downright wrong. It didn’t matter if 10 out of 10 users had the same problem with something that met standards, the team just wouldn’t budge. 

Another example comes from accessibility. I’ve worked at a couple of companies that took accessibility very seriously. And that means that they didn’t just stop at following all the WCAG guidelines. I found very early on in my career that those guidelines are necessary, but not sufficient. Testing with disabled users typically uncovered issues that, though the team had followed all the guidelines, could still stop them in their tracks. 

In general, I am a huge fan of standards. Users do not want to think (thanks, Steve Krug), and predictability is often their best friend online. 

In some cases, though, there is something else, something important that needs to be addressed but can often be overlooked. And that is the actual users’ experience. Trying to shoehorn these users into something that just doesn’t fit their own experience and way of thinking is going to cause no shortage of blisters, cramps, and sore feet. 


Canadian Bill Buxton is one of the early pioneers of HCI
(and is currently at Microsoft)

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