Why sometimes we need inconsistent design?
As UX manager or designer, we always need to answer challenging questions, one of those is about consistency : “Why your design not the same for desktop and mobile?’, “I can see inconsistent behaviour between these two functions, can we make them the same?”
It is always true that we need to keep the consistency of a product so that it can reduce customer learning time and development cost, no matter it’s behaviour or visual consistency. It sounds weird to say ‘ignore consistency’, but sometimes insist for consistency may cause bad user experience and we may need to create a new behaviour to fit the purpose.
How should we judge the design need consistency or create new behaviour? A few situations listed below you should consider creating new behaviour :
1. Similar feature with different objectives
When dismissing a lightbox in a mobile app, you usually just need to click the close or cross button then the lightbox will dismiss. In some situation of e-commerce mobile app, if the checkout also has a cancel or dismiss button, a confirmation dialogue box is better needed so your customers would not leave your checkout process that easily.
Example
Spring
The shopping cart
A lightbox with the cross button on the left top side, you can dismiss the lightbox straight away.
The checkout page
A cancel button on the right top side, you need a confirmation before you can cancel the checkout.
We don’t want the customers can leave the checkout process easily because they may have already entered lots of information that needed for checkout. If they leave that section that information will lose, but in the other situation like the shopping cart lightbox, nothing lost even you dismiss it straight away.
Tips : You can define this behaviour as ‘Anything being cancelled will cause any information / data lost, it should have a confirmation dialogue box.’
2. Same feature with different target audiences
This one usually happens for admin platform vs customer platform. For example, a product listing in Shopify admin platform is quite different from the customer platform.
Example
Shopify
Product List(Admin Platform)
The admin platform usually has small thumbnails, showing the number of inventory and the type of products. It has the corresponding filter such as filter by visibility and type.
Product List (Customer Platform)
The customer platform usually has large thumbnails, with the price and product name, other information is hidden until the customers reach the product detail page, or even not shown until necessary, e.g. the number of inventory.
It’s clear that we want to show the appealing thumbnail towards customer because this is what they care about but not those inventory number of the type of product in the product listing view.
Tips : Optimise the user experience based on the target audience’s need instead of asking consistency
3. Same feature on different devices
This one should be well-known by many designers. The most common example is desktop vs mobile design. With mobile design, you can have so many additional functions that desktop would not have such as gesture interaction and mobile keyboard.
Example
Leave a comment (Mobile)
Because the mobile keyboard has already included the typing area, so it makes sense to only show the comment box until the users click on ‘Comment’ button.
Leave a comment (Desktop)
While on Facebook Desktop version, it does not make sense to ask to keep consistent with the mobile version which is to hide the comment box, as desktop screen always have much more spaces than the mobile screen.
Tips : Optimise the user experience based on how users use the device even it is exactly the same feature, instead of asking consistency.
Summary
If the ‘inconsistency’ can give your users additional value or potential advantage for the business, such as the checkout experience in Spring, then we should consider making it inconsistent, with relevant reference supported would be great and convincing. Sometimes we don’t need to keep the interaction consistency across devices. Instead, we should optimise those devices experience. I will be crazy if every time I left a comment on Facebook desktop version, and I need to have 1 more step to see the comment box.
