But then we moved into the GUI and everyone thought it was important not just to have the same shortcuts or even the same menu layouts, but literally the same design language in icon design. It trained people that switching platforms was much harder than it should be. In reality, noone is struggling with the web because of minor layout issues.
Consistency isn't king, good design is.
How do you know? Is there usability research to support this claim? Probably not, since practically no one does actual usability testing anymore. Product managers just slap something together and then start A/B testing to fudge the narrow metrics that they need for their performance reviews.
Ok, things get harder when we talk about shopping carts, logins, and other details, but even there not all good flows have to look the same in literally every way in order to be usable.
At least CNN still has lite.cnn.com as a low-fat alternative. (Slightly too slim, otherwise everyone would use it…)
I weep often because I can see that people are making mistakes that make software less useable because they are either ignorant or arrogant and fail to uphold the guidelines that have been worked out over three decades of blood, sweat and tears.
There was a time when consistency and accessibility were primary considerations in GUI design. Sadly this value system was destroyed in two steps. First web eliminated the structure derived from platform frameworks that underpinned good desktop GUI. Then mobile sidelined the human-centric design thinking that derived from office ergonomics and turned the role of UI designer into “illustrator who draws pictures of apps.”