[dliff]

I agree. Typical users aren't going to complain "hey this app doesn't feel native" or even know what that means!

However, they will likely find it harder to use without an explanation why. If most of the apps a user uses follow the guidelines of Android/iOS, and they are primarily a user of one platform, and your app doesn't follow either, it seems obvious that they won't be able to use their built-up knowledge of how apps work in general to navigate your app.

Most people I know, including myself, have found it initially a little more difficult to navigate around apps from the platform other than the one we are used to using daily.

Apps that insist on creating the same UI on both platforms can be a mixed bag, IMO. Sometimes executed well, sometimes poorly. Because of this, I usually prefer apps that separately comply with each platform.

I am however interested in playing around with Flutter soon!

[skybrian]

I kinda wonder about this stuff. Seems like it depends on your user base and I'd like to see the user study.

Helping older relatives who find touchscreens to be disconcerting (due to mistaken touches that they don't instinctively recover from by hitting the back button), I think native look and feel doesn't go nearly far enough to make things easy to use, for some audiences anyway.

[com2kid]

> If most of the apps a user uses follow the guidelines of Android/iOS, and they are primarily a user of one platform, and your app doesn't follow either, it seems obvious that they won't be able to use their built-up knowledge of how apps work in general to navigate your app.

I just checked my 8 most commonly used apps, exclusing Chrome / Gmail, FWIW I am using Android.

1. Spotify - Doesn't follow any sort of UI standards. Also randomly decides to go into drive mode.

2. Clock - Built in, follows guidelines. About 50% of the time I hit the "trash" icon when I want to reset a countdown timer.

3. Development tool, not counting this

4. Libby, awesome app to checkout books local libraries. They have some seriously cool (but not always discoverable!) UI elements that custom solve problems that have. Their audio scrubber and speed changer for audio books are really cool.

5. Tabata timer - Doesn't follow any guidelines, really really needs a "stop" button instead of relying on back button to stop a workout.

6. Audible - Custom purpose driven UI, similar to Libby but different enough it can be a bit troublesome going back and forth.

7 and 8. Games, always have a custom UI, no problem using them.

tl;dr normal doesn't exist.

[abacadaba]

> 1. Spotify - Doesn't follow any sort of UI standards. Also randomly decides to go into drive mode.

And lesson #1 in why to always follow some/any kind of UI standard.. Luckily their algorithms/service are decent.