Learning Portfolio 2 – Consistency Examples

Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company, and as one of its best-selling beverages, Coca-Cola has spawned many different flavors. Such as coco cola – light, coca cola- zero. And the image below shows that coca cola can use similar layout design for their different flavor cola.

Figure 1

The toilet sign is one of the most common signs in our daily life. And the toilet signs below, we can see these in almost any public place. The male sign and female sign used similar shape to create the consistency between these two signs.

Figure 2

Direction sign is one of the most common sign we can see on the road or highway. They all use the same colour and similar shape to create the consistency and make driver easily knows that this sign is to remind people where this road leads to.

Figure 3

 

References:

Figure 1: Coca-Cola — Brand consistency on Behance. Retrieved from https://www.behance.net/gallery/11196997/Coca-Cola-Brand-consistency

Figure 2: Vinyl Toilet Signs (9 Designs) | Viro Display UK. Retrieved from https://www.virodisplay.co.uk/products/vinyl-male-female-toilet-sign

Figure 3: driving instruction direction signs – multiple.GIF. Retrieved from https://www.mainroads.wa.gov.au/BuildingRoads/StandardsTechnical/RoadandTrafficEngineering/TrafficManagement/DirectionalSignsGuidelines/Pages/Guidelines_for_Direction_Signs_in_the_Perth_Metropolitan_Area.aspx

Consistency

According to the principle of consistency, systems are more usable and learnable when similar parts are expressed in similar ways(Lidwell & Holden, 2003). Consistency enables people to effectively transfer knowledge to new contexts, learn new things quickly, and focus attention on the relevant aspects of a task. So consistency helps to reduce the learning time for a product since the user gets familiar with the given experience(minhas, 2018). Consistency also enables users to become familiar with your website, your brand, etc. and ensures that your company interacts with them (Soegaard, 2018).

Functional consistency refers to the consistency of meaning and action(Lidwell & Holden, 2003). Functional consistency improves usability and learnability by enabling people to leverage existing knowledge about how the design functions. It also increases the predictability of the product. Predictability leads to users feeling safe and secure(Nikolov, 2017). For example, videocassette recorder control symbols, such as for rewind, play, forward, are now used on devices ranging from slide projectors to MP3 music players.

Internal consistency refers to consistency with other elements in the system (Lidwell & Holden, 2003). Internal consistency cultivates trust with people; it is an indicator that a system has been designed, and not cobbled together. Within any logical grouping, elements should be aesthetically and functionally consistent with one another.

External consistency refers to consistency with other elements in the environment(Lidwell & Holden, 2003). External consistency extends the benefits of internal consistency across multiple, independent systems. It is more difficult to achieve because different systems rarely observe common design standards.

 

 

 

References:

Lidwell,W., Holden, K., & Butler, J. (2003). Aesthetic-Usability Effect. In Universal Principles of Design (pp.46). Massachusetts: Rockport.

minhas, s. (2018). Consistency — A Key Design Principle – Prototypr. Retrieved from https://blog.prototypr.io/consistency-a-key-design-principle-5d125469da8e

Nikolov, A. (2017). Design principle: Consistency – UX Collective. Retrieved from https://uxdesign.cc/design-principle-consistency-6b0cf7e7339f

Soegaard, M. (2018). Consistency: MORE than what you think. Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/consistency-more-than-what-you-think