Conformity or uniformity?

Notes

You have to sacrifice a little in conformity if you want to achieve uniformity.

It pays off that everyone use the same system in a shop. One way to share people’s files, let’s say. You might think that reduces choice, that it constrains creative thinking, and in some sense it might. But in there is the fear of conformity, whereas what you’re really trying to get are the added benefits of uniformity. Uniformity, without the constraining force of conformity.

Apple understands something about the subtle difference between conformity and uniformity. You might say there’s an irony between their current dominance of iOS in the mobile space and their 1984 Super Bowl commercial that heralded them as anti-conformist. But somehow they managed to create in iOS a platform that added morechoice and more freedom of expression. Like everything else in life, the subtleties of excellence lie in how you slice the pie, where you make your choices. Standard screen sizes matter, for example, and imposing that constraint has a liberating factor on other design choices.

You might look at the file-sharing example as too simplistic. Surely, there’s no harm in requiring everyone to store their files in one spot. What’s the big deal, after all? The harm isn’t in requiring where people put their files. The harm is in not going deep enough in the user experience analysis of the system. You’ve put the system in place but there’s no sharing of files. Maybe people hesitate with your solution because the folders aren’t named intuitively. Maybe there’s no sharing being done because team members don’t communicate the new files they put up. Maybe those are the details that affect the adoption of your system. But if you don’t know those things, you throw your arms up, lose patience, and declare that standards don’t work unless they’re imposed.

Adoption is a tough thing to foster. It’s touchy because you’re transforming people’s day-to-day routines, their reference points. You’re asking people to switch train tracks, to go on a new route. You could impose it. Maybe there’s a way to get everyone to choose that new way, instead.

The trick, to me, has always been to sit in as the user and imagine the experience. It’s always a worthwhile experience, mostly because you learn that there aren’t that many variables to change into constants — the mountain of variables is never as huge as we fear. You just have to bathe into their experience and you’ll see there are a few, key things that make all of their experiences the same. Once you demystify those, once you find the few things to nail down, then you can be an agent of change.

To get uniformity, step back a little, resist those urges to require conformity. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and in the end, you’ll find you’ll all be further ahead.