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consistency-external

Apply external consistency — honoring conventions from outside your product (platform conventions, category conventions, established interaction patterns) so users can transfer their learning into your product. Use when designing for a specific platform (iOS, Android, web), entering an established product category (calendar, email, file manager), choosing icons or gestures, or deciding when to follow vs. lead a convention. External consistency reduces the learning cost for new users; deviating from it requires both a strong reason and explicit framing.

plugins/HDeibler/universal-design-principles/plugins/cognition-and-learnability-principles/skills/consistency-external/SKILL.md

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# Consistency — external

External consistency is honoring conventions that exist outside your product. The hamburger menu means "menu" because it means "menu" everywhere; the magnifying glass means "search"; pinch-to-zoom does what it does. Following these conventions lets users transfer their learning from other products directly into yours, with no onboarding cost.

External consistency is most powerful for new users — they're using accumulated learning from years of other products. As users mature in your product, internal consistency starts to dominate, because their learning becomes mostly product-specific. But the first session, where conversion happens or doesn't, is largely about external consistency.

## What external consistency includes

Several distinct kinds of convention live "outside" your product.

**Platform conventions.** iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, web — each platform has accumulated conventions that users expect from native apps on that platform. The platform-native back gesture, the platform-native scrollbar, the platform-native form-input behavior, the platform-native keyboard shortcut for save. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, Android's Material Design, and similar documents codify these.

**Category conventions.** Calendar apps look like calendars. Email apps look like email. File managers look like file managers. There's a strong, accumulated category-level expectation about layout, terminology, and interaction. Departing from category convention requires either a strong reason ("we're reimagining email") or accepting that users will have a steeper learning curve.