UI Design: Beauty, or Consistency?

It reminds me of the early days of DTP with ten-font newsletters (thankfully, laser printers were only black and white back then). What we need is "Application Templates" that provide familiarity for both the users and the developers/designers. Your template needs to match your purpose. The Office Ribbon interface may be great for a complex app, but it's silly for notepad. The right template depends on the purpose, the audience, and the complexity of the application.

Maybe this is stating the obvious but I believe the key is striking the right balance between esthetically pleasing UI elements and consistency in their behavior. I think we can have some lattitude in look and feel as long as sound usability principles are followed and user controls behave in ways in which the target user expects. However, when in doubt, form should follow function.

I agree with Mr. Sax, especially about the issues of target audience, purpose and complexity. I also think advocate using UI design patterns , such as the ones found in Jenifer Tidwell's book, Designing Interfaces (O'Reilly). I personally believe that the interface should be the simplest one possible to do a given task, with no unnecessary features and more importantly, should not get in the way of getting the task done. Therefore, eye candy that helps a person do a task better, easier, quicker etc. is good, and conversely, eye candy that makes you mouse more, learn something new for no useful purpose, or makes the task take longer, is bad. Which is why we need designers to design and users to test if we want good applications.

Non-appliance applications (think Office) need consistency. Appliance applications (think iPhone) create their own consistency. Each has its place: non-appliance applications typically deliver many more kinds of functionality than appliance applications; while appliance applications cut training needs dramatically.

One argument for sticking to the environment's standards is that it can accommodate users with special needs. If somebody can use only a keyboard, it shortchanges them to require only mouse input for some function and vice-versa.

It is not just people with handicaps that can benefit from multiple input methods.

The people who use a package heavily need to be able to do their work quickly and efficiently. Keyboard shortcuts help with this. Another is ways to bypass the GUI "friendliness" that an experienced user no longer needs and finds gets in the way.

I still use WordStar as my programming editor, because it is fast. GUI editors do not do it for me.

YMMV. Since it probably will, users should be able to use packages in their respective ways without feeling that a package comes with rope (to tie an arm behind ones back or to hang oneself).