[IxDA Discuss] product SUITE design

[Andrei Herasimchuk]

On Aug 3, 2007, at 1:44 PM, Wilson, Russell wrote:

> If most of the interface widgets and interaction patterns are
> the same, but the navigation is different, is that okay?

The short answer is no.

The long answer is that it's ok as long as your users tell you it is,  
and that they tell you in a way that is definitive. (Most people are  
used to tolerating things they honestly shouldn't tolerate, esp with  
regards to software interfaces.) I wish you luck finding a reasonable  
way to get this sort of answer from your customer base that you can  
use to make a reliable design decision.

Generally speaking, the way you get by with this is to design the  
interface widgets to be configurable either horizontal or vertical,  
and make sure engineering has taken the appropriate amount of time to  
implement those variations that is acceptable from a usage point of  
view. (there are often a host of design details that get missed when  
doing this sort of thing.) Then just set the default across the  
product suites that is consistent. For those users that don't mind  
inconsistency in approach or have a special reason for needed  
horizontal in one product and vertical in another (which in my  
experience is a small set of one's customer base), they can have the  
option of setting the interface control to be different across the  
different products in the suite.

--
Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422