VOICE

For many years I studied singing and enjoyed performing in operas and musicals of all kinds.  The single most important thing any singer learns (or at least hears) is to sing with your own voice.  Don't copy anyone, don't make up a sound, just sing with your voice.  The uniqueness of your sound is what makes you memorable, enjoyable and marketable.  You don't even have to be "good" so much as you need to be distinct.  Now, there are some limits to how "bad" you can be, especially in operatic singing, but being unique trumps almost everything else.

If you ever get a bunch of opera buffs together to discuss singers, there will be all kinds of opinions about who is the greatest, who is lousy and so forth.  And many well-known and even famous singers will be in both groups.  But those singers are all recognizable and memorable and that's why they're being discussed.  The pleasant, in-tune, pretty but cookie-cutter singers don't get the leading roles and aren't memorable.

The same principle holds for software applications.  Your application needs to have a distinct voice.  It needs to have a voice that is distinctive, recognizable and memorable.  And I'm not speaking strictly from a branding perspective.  The application with the strong voice is better for the users AND the brand.

Distinctive, clear, unambiguous and memorable are all great attributes for a user interface and an interaction design to have.  An application with those attributes ends up being easier to learn and easier to remember.  Now, there may be some who disagree with or don't like the voice of the application, but even so, they've paid attention and remembered it.

Voice.  Strive to give each application a clear, distinctive voice.