The User Interface Should Be Like Glass

Like glass, the UI should be transparent

I recently watched a TED-Ed video, Why is glass transparent? Once you get past the what is glass made of part, this video, I thought, would do a darn good job of explaining the qualities of a well designed user interface. Try watching it again, but replacing the word glass with UI.

The author, Mark Miodownik, explains that the amazing properties of glass, being both solid and transparent, is what gives glass its many uses. Glass lets in light through windows, but keeps out the elements, lenses allow us to see into space and tiny elements that make this world up (telescope & microscope). He sums up his video nicely with:

It is hard to imagine modern civilization without glass. And yet, for such an important material, we rarely think about glass and its impact. It is precisely because the most important and useful quality of glass is being featureless and invisible, that we often forget that it is even there.

The UI should be solid, yet transparent. It should be invisible and featureless. People should not even know it is there, and take it for granted.

This can be hard as a UI designer. We want our UI to be loved, to be seen. Look at all this hard work I have done! The best compliment we could receive really would be, ‘I don’t know why, but it is so easy to use.’