When Aesthetics Inspire
Aesthetics do so much more than enable or hinder usability.
Sometimes a designed object just feels right in a way that’s hard to describe, like how putting on your favorite pair of jeans can just make you feel more like yourself.
Another compelling example of this is learning a musical instrument. If you were going to learn, which instrument would you choose, and why?
For some people merely picking up an acoustic guitar or sitting on a piano bench is inspiring. (Personally, I want an electric guitar with the volume cranked to eleven.)
That choice is somehow intensely personal, even though all instruments are designed to help users perform the same task, which is to play musical notes.
But the difference is that the way each instrument achieves that task feels totally different. Each instrument has different tonal qualities, requires you to move differently to use it, and has a certain look to it.
No matter which instrument you play, you will always have practically the same notes available, but the way you feel when you play those notes is important. Using a certain instrument might lead you to play a certain genre of music or different notes than you might with another instrument.
And so, that feeling you might get when using one instrument over another leads to an entirely different outcome — you end up doing so much more than just accomplishing the task of playing musical notes. You’ve written a song or delivered a new performance all because of that feeling. (Humans are amazing, aren’t we?)
In the design industry, there have been several movements suggesting that ornamentation and aesthetics are damaging. The idea is that we should remove needless styling and focus on function and efficiency. “Flat Design” is merely the latest incarnation of this idea. And while “Flat Design” is hardly still a hot topic, its influence is still evident in many designs you and I use today.
If you were to apply this thinking to musical instruments and fashion, reducing them purely to their functions, you’d remove so much of what makes them great. Instruments would all sound the same, and clothes would only keep you warm.
And that is why aesthetics are so critical to making great design.
If you think of creating a design like creating a musical instrument and your users as musicians, aesthetics become immensely valuable. Your creation isn’t just a means to an end, but it can be a form of inspiration itself. The look of your design determines who likes it and therefore who ends up using it, just like how some people play Grand Pianos and others play Minimoogs. The look of your design affects how people feel using it and what they end up making with it, just like how holding a Gibson Flying V guitar makes you want to play 80s Hair Metal but fretting a Martin Acoustic guitar might bring Bob Dylan to mind.
Similarly, a writing app UI design allows users to enter and format text, but what kinds of writers might its design attract? A project management app allows people to collaborate, post messages, and create schedules, but how could the design of that app affect the combined result of all those little tasks?
The idea that aesthetics are either a boon or bane to usability is a false dichotomy. Aesthetics affect more than just usability, but also: who will want to use the object, how people feel when they use the object, and the final result of using the object.
And so, both the form and function of an object are important. Ignoring either of those aspects diminishes your design.
Everyone will always disagree about aesthetics, and that’s because aesthetics are concerned with people’s subjective taste in the first place. But that’s also what makes aesthetics valuable. Designing an aesthetic that appeals to everyone might be an impossible waste of time, but creating an aesthetic with specific people in mind lends design an incredible amount of power.
So don’t ignore aesthetics and the emotional aspects of design. They’re a big part of what makes design valuable in the first place.
I, for one, am grateful for all the bizarre, diverse instruments that designers have made and all the wild music these designs have both enabled and inspired.
And I hope designers never stop making opinionated, emotional designs that inspire us and the “music” we make.
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