How to Avoid Foolish Consistency – a more reasonable and reasoned point of view on consistency in UI design than Jakob Nielsen’s do-what-other-sites-are-doing-even-though-they-suck-ass-too approach. Here’s the bottom line:
- Begin by reusing existing controls or UI concepts in your sketches and prototypes—start with as much consistency as you can. Style guides, like the Windows Interface guidelines, are of great value here in helping you to reuse as much existing knowledge and good design work as possible.
- If your sketches and prototypes aren’t working in user tests or other evaluations because of the failure of existing concepts, try to grow an existing concept to cover the new situation you have. If you change the behavior of a control, apply that change everywhere the control is used. If you change a concept, consistently apply that change.
- If you can’t extend what you have to solve the problem, go and design a new control or concept to solve your problem.
- If you have to use special cases (local optimization of a UI control that isn’t used everywhere), make sure it’s the best trade-off you have.
And the Emerson quote seals it for me:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” – Ralph Waldo Emerson