Follow company consistency or OS convention?
We're a huge company and develope a lot of apps and other services. So our target is to create a consistency over all the different applications to ensure a consistent brand-expirience.
So we created our main app which is available for iOS and Android. Both apps look nearly exactly identical.
But now came the question up, if we shouldn't focus on OS-conventions? The users are familiar with the OS-behaviour so the apps should follow the OS-conventions.
First I tried to find some studies about this topic.
I'm aware there is a similar question on UX SE "Design for Application consistency or follow OS convention?". But they're talking about consistency over Desktop & Mobile, and we focus on iOS vs. Android (not desktop), and we need source proof to close our discoussions. So I opened another question.
But in this question, they say:
Users know their devices, but not your app. That's why Snapchat is so hard to learn.
On the other hand, the NN group released a study with an opposite result:
A consistent user experience, regardless of platform, is one of the 4 key elements of a usable omnichannel experience. Consistency across channels helps build trust with customers.
Source
Sadly, I didn't found much more than that. Now I need your help.
We started to list up pro's and con's for Consistency vs. convention:
Consistency:
- The user will know how to use the app, regardless of the OS.
- We can focus on the user workflow with our services and don't need to create something maybe worst because of a OS-convention
- It's cheaper because we only need to create 1 prototype and we only need to service one design.
- We would need to redesign the app for every OS-guideline change, which will be much more expensive.
Convention:
The most users have either an iOS, or an Android device. So they don't care if the app is exactly consistent over the plattform. They only care about their device-version. So it should behave like the rest of the apps on this specific plattform
If we use conventions, it will be faster to develop the app since we can use standard elements.
What I need from you:
I'm interested in your opinion and additional pro/cons, but I need official sources to be able to share those to avoid "that's your opinion"-comments on the arguments.
I hope I made clear what I mean and what I need. If not, feel free to comment questions or edit this post.