Hi Matt, Take eclipse (www.eclipse.org) example, they have the native look and feel at every platform, but at the same time, keep the interaction (behavior) as uniform as possible, which definitly help it's user experience. But the key here, is 1, first the user experience is uniform 2. second, the native look and feel Many guys in this forum may tell you, the first factor is far important than second from different perspective, but the core may lat at the native look and feel have little to do with usability, until it will harm the interaction significantly.
Cheers, -- Jarod On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 3:51 AM, Matt Doe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > We are charged with the redesign of a cross platform (Windows, Mac and > Linux) application. From data we've collected, we know about 93 > percent of users are Windows users, 6-7 percent are Mac and the > remaining 1 percent are some flavor of Linux. > > The application was originally written to have a native look and feel > and users have been used to that for the past 6 years. We have moved > onto the visual design phase and we are torn between going completely > native, or doing a non-native feel across platforms. > > Certain windows applications like Picasa have a non-native look and > feel, but they can get away with this very easily because it still > follows a lot of windows conventions like the primary color being a > shade of grey and using soft borders around buttons, etc... > > Then you have the polar opposite like iTunes on windows or even more > extreme, some Adobe Air applications like eBay desktop, where the > look-and-feel deviates so far from the platform it just feels awkward > to use it. What I find interesting is that web applications have a > non-native look-and-feel (gmail, facebook, etc...), but they are no > less usable and don't feel awkward to use. Maybe it's because it's > wrapped in a native browser? > > Does anyone have any research or experience about the usability of > non-native look-and-feels across different platforms? > > Thanks! > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- Designing for better life style. http://jarodtang.spaces.live.com/ http://jarodtang.blogspot.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
