A myth that I seem to continually confront in software design is that applications should be consistent within their application family. A family of applications will typically include a full-featured website, a mobile website, and one or more native applications which provide several of the same core features. Some application designers seem to misunderstand what it means to be consistent and begin enforcing things like color palettes and verbiage.
It is much more important that user interactions are consistent across applications than look and feel. Each of your applications should allow users to use a single login and access their data in the same way. You should also ensure that each of your application’s navigation hierarchies are similar. This allows users to find what they are looking for even if it is the first time they have used the application. You do not want to force your users to adapt to every individual application.
It is also very important that you pay attention to the little details such as form inputs. For example, you would not to accept a date on one screen using a MM/DD/YYYY pattern and then accept another date on another screen using a DD/MM/YY pattern. Your applications should never surprise your users. In fact, you should work hard to make it possible for users to never have to deal with date formatters. This is easily accomplished by progressively enhancing date fields with a date pickers.
Each one of your applications needs to have its own personality. By enforcing limits on things like color palettes and verbiage you are eliminating possibilities to improve your applications.
Deadmeta4 