[OpenID] Is a consistent UX incompatible with customizable UI?

[Paul Madsen]

Shade, I like your argument that there is no single perfect UI/UX for 
all users, but even for there to be a single optimal UI per user (for 
them to choose) would imply that there exists one UI that is appropriate 
for all the various applications that a given user interacted with ....

I'm not talking mobile vs desktop etc, rather suggesting that it's not a 
given that the same UI/UX that works for a social site will work for 
banking - the two applications likely having different requirements for 
consent, business/trust models, and tolerance for annoying the user etc 
- all of these potentially impacting UI/UX.

regards

paul

p.s. One mechanism that would allow a user's UI model preferences to be 
recognized by the RP would be a common domain cookie as per SAML. I'm 
guessing this is not going to fly :-)

SitG Admin wrote:
> Disclaimer: in this post I conflate UI with UX. Just noticed that as 
> I was almost finished writing the message, and thought I'd clarify 
> that I see a consistent UX as requiring a consistent UI, too.
>
> Switching to a new UI shouldn't require coming up with a "perfect" 
> new UI that everyone can accept. Different people will have different 
> ideas of what constitutes a "good" UI, what's understandable, what's 
> *comfortable*. If we try coming up with a single UI that suits "most" 
> people, we'll leave some of them out, and either provoke ire by 
> forcing users to switch to a UI that they don't like, or be 
> ineffectual when users understand the new UI so poorly that they 
> don't really get used to it, much less notice when the UI is suddenly 
> inconsistent.
>
> The tricky part with offering user-customizable UI (because it's all 
> about the user, and because the user is presumably best-equipped to 
> determine which UI they like best!) is being able to determine which 
> UI they want *before* identifying them. Maybe an early step in the 
> flow where the user selects their desired UI by some code-name?
>
> I'm thinking that it doesn't matter whether all sites agree on a 
> single UI to be consistent about; all we need is for a given UI to be 
> consistent *per user*. If we emphasize the user-centricity, and ask 
> sites to offer their users the *option* of going with any of the 
> official, defined UI's (official so users can rely on being able to 
> get the same UI from the defining code-name), users could hold a 
> reasonable expectation of seeing the same UI wherever they might go 
> on the web.
>
> -Shade
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Paul Madsen             e:paulmadsen @ ntt-at.com
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