Desktop-mobile Consistency

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I'm the first person to rail against a slavish consistency between experiences. I want to see the right experience in the right context on the right device, not a foolish consistency. The same experience with a brand in different situations is bad for your brand and bad for your customers.

You can read a bit more about bad consistency in my recent how many webs essay. But this entry is about necessary consistency. And key players don't have it.

The wrong inconsistencies cause user problems

Different labels, different methods of organizing information, conflicting default values, and conflicting underlying metaphors will cause problems. Let's look at examples.

iPhone 3.0 broke consistency for playlists

The latest software release from Apple is the first iPod software that changed the sort order of playlists. A playlist titled "1 party" or "_Podcasts" is at the top of the list in iTunes, and was on my iPod Touch until last week. People who name their playlists this way do it to quickly find certain content. Apple changed the sort order, and those lists are now at the bottom.

Worse, the sort order has been changed for podcasts within the playlist as well. I tend to like my podcasts to play from oldest to newest, or in random order.

Finally, and this may be a bug, the smart playlists are not updating correctly. My _Podcasts smart playlist (in iTunes) explicitly excludes some artists and unchecked items. But on my iPod Touch, they are back. I'm going to have to re-build my smart playlist to get it to work in both places.

This experience has left me unable to consume my content, to the point that I have to pull over in the car, scroll down somewhere in the list to where I have fewer spurious entries, and launch the playlist from there. Bad inconsistency.

OmniFocus mobile is inconsistent for due times

OmniFocus is actually the reason I wanted an iPhone or iPod Touch. It's been so helpful in balancing "hugely long task list" with "actually getting stuff done." It's not for everybody, but I continue to use it. (Gmail tasks? Outlook tasks? iCal tasks? All toys.)

The desktop version of the application has a default time a task is due, for all tasks with a due date. I think by default it was 5pm: a nice, sane date. And changeable in the options.

Unfortunately, the mobile version also has a default task-due time. Midnight. And it is not changeable in the options. So every time I specify a due date, I have to also specify a due time. Of course I forget. After all, the point is quick capture of tasks; adding four extra actions isn't quick.

The problem comes when I'm deciding what to do next. I have tasks due today, and tasks due tomorrow. Generally, I do the former before the latter. And I tend to do overdue tasks before that. Unfortunately, mobile-generated tasks are late for the entire day that they are due. In red. Causing flags to go up. Because they are due at midnight.

The right consistency

So while a slavish consistency is bad, structural inconsistencies — especially with my personal data — are also bad.

Don't design mobile in a vacuum

When building your mobile experience, it should be consistent with the vision and intent of the rest of your brand's experiences. You need to have a person or group responsible for maintaining overall design vision and brand identity, as well as overall design vision for whatever product suite you are working on.

The mobile experience must be part of a coherent whole, not independent.

not discounting at all the point you’re making. But didnt microsoft try that with win-mo and go terribly wrong

That’s the point I’ve been making. We can’t say “no consistency”, nor can we say “fully consistent.” We have to have the right consistency, not a foolish consistency. MS was a bit foolish.