Four Virtues of Exceptional Design That AI Cannot Produce — Part Two: Clarity
The second virtue of design in this 4 part series is Clarity — immediate comprehension at every interaction. What constitutes a “good” design? Are there universal principles that can be applied to most, if not all, applications of design? In my personal quest to define good design, I have recognized 4 virtues of design that are manifest in exceptional design solutions. Read about the first virtue, Utility, here.
Clarity
“To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.” Milton Glaser
What is design clarity?
When I was studying design at USU, we would display our completed assignments on a wall in front of the entire class. The ultimate litmus test was to see which designs could stand on their own without any explanation from the designer. To reiterate Maeda’s point from the previous post, exceptional designs do not raise questions, they provide answers.¹ Why they exist, what they are for and how to use them must be obvious to the intended audience. A poster must effectively communicate the purpose and details of an important event. A tool must have sufficient affordance to signal how it’s meant to be used. The packaging or branding of a company must provide emotional motivation to attract potential customers. In all three examples, what is to occur, how it’s meant to be used, and the promised benefit must all be clearly communicated in a short period of time.
Designers rely heavily on visual cues to communicate intent. The foundations of good visual design and communication are rooted in psychology. Designers understand visual perception based on the principles of Gestalt, which guide design choices for maximum clarity. This includes concepts like proximity, closure, and similarity, that help designers organize information in a way that can be digested and understood properly.²
Typography is also an important part of the designers toolkit. Letterforms are literally the symbols of written language and when properly mastered, can help evoke the right meaning and impact. Many designers also acquire a strong grasp of the written word in order to effectively convey the intended messages.
For functional solutions, Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group released 10 Usability Heuristics that largely ensure the customer or intended user understands how to use a website or application.³ It is specifically for interface design but similar guidelines apply to industrial design as well. Designers also employ color theory and symbolism to infuse emotion in their designs.
To design is to embark on a never-ending pursuit of clarity. It is necessary at every stage of the design process; which is in and of itself, a method for moving teams and ideas from ambiguity to concreteness or clarity. The process begins by striving to achieve a clear understanding of the problem at hand and ends with a solution to overcome said problem, also known as a utility. (See previous post on utility.) Many of the most common deliverables of the UX design process can be viewed as artifacts for bringing clarity to the team or customer. Teams beginning a project can use whiteboard sketches to bring alignment and direction. They can build wireframes and low fidelity prototypes to illustrate how a complex flow might work.⁴
Why is clarity important?
Sometimes a simple image or diagram is truly worth a thousand words. The renaissance astronomer and polymath, Nicolaus Copernicus, published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543.⁵ It contains 405 pages of math and physics to propose a radically new model of the universe. The book also contains a page with a diagram that succinctly represents his proposal so elegantly that even I can understand it. The planets circle the sun or “sol” in the middle.
Visual communication is processed faster than text. The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. It takes the brain only 13 milliseconds to process an image.⁶ People tend to retain visual information better, perhaps because they also have the ability to carry emotional significance.
Ambiguity is the enemy of good design. Designers rarely want their audience or customers to feel lost or confused. In the increasingly competitive landscape, you don’t have much time to convey your product or service to the customer. You have to portray your brand, the associated emotional promises as well as your distinct offering and how it works. If your customers cannot understand all of that in a short amount of time, you will lose them. If the usability of your product isn’t obvious, you also run the risk of losing customers.
There is the added benefit that people have a tendency to perceive attractive products as more usable. This is known as the aesthetic-usability effect. “People tend to believe that things that look better will work better — even if they aren’t actually more effective or efficient.”⁷
Organizations and their internal teams also stand to benefit from improved clarity. According to research conducted by US firm Gartner, poor communication may be responsible for 70% of business mistakes.⁸ Imagine a world devoid of miscommunication and misunderstandings. How many customer issues would instantly disappear? How would the productivity of your teams be impacted?
Exceptional designers will apply the principles of clarity internally, within their organization. They will be sensitive to ambiguity on or between teams and seek clarification on requirements, and vision. Jared Spool encourages designers to proactively present experience visions to help align internal teams on a common goal.
Social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt argue that humans’ ability to share intentions ultimately aided our evolution. “…when early humans began to share intentions, their ability to hunt, gather, raise children, and raid their neighbors increased exponentially. Everyone on the team now had a mental representation of the task, [and] knew that his or her partners shared the same representation… Victory went to the most cohesive groups — the ones that could scale up their ability to share intentions from three people to three hundred or three thousand people.”⁹
Our ability to share intentions may very well set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to do. Renowned CEO and Time magazine businessperson of the year, Bob Iger teaches students of business strategy and leadership that, “your strategy is only as good as your ability to articulate it. Clarity becomes incredibly important. Clarity actually is an essential ingredient of good leadership.”¹⁰
Exceptional designers are willing to work with leadership to refine the internal message until it is absolutely clear and everyone in the organization shares the same mental representation of where they are going together. Sometimes it only takes a quick sketch to align a motivated team. Economic theories, Oscar winning films, and Nobel prize winning ideas all started as a sketch on the back of a napkin.¹¹
Great designers seek clarity in all their dealings. This means painstaking attention to their typical output of work from micro copy and instructions, to interactions and usability. It also means constant clarification between teammates, across departments and throughout the whole organization. Designers will scrutinize the clarity of the overall goals and mission of the organization. The benefit is an intuitive product that is easy to use, and a strong brand that quickly and adequately communicates the value your company provides. It also equates to an organization that is on the same page and working efficiently.
How clarity is manifested?
Assessing the clarity of a design solution is essential to evaluating its success. Once again, the hierarchy of values from the previous post can serve as a guide for evaluating the clarity of different utilities. Is the information accurate and complete? Is the function obvious and usable? Do people understand the benefits?
- Informational — is the messaging clear and accurate at every touchpoint?
- Functional — is the solution understood and usable?
- Emotional — are the emotional/social benefits readily apparent?
- Well-being — are the methodologies, requirements and consequences clearly articulated?
Someone with a good understanding of Gestalt principles can articulate whether or not specific design decisions were effective based on intent. For example, proximity helps group similar items together and can help establish hierarchy. The 10 Usability Heuristics by NNGroup mentioned above is an excellent framework for evaluating whether a website or app is sufficiently usable. A design candidate may also present their own evidence of usability tests to validate the effectiveness of their designs and demonstrate their effort to maximize clarity. When we get to the final design virtue, Causality, we will discuss more ways to demonstrate whether a design solution achieved its objective.
Evaluating clarity in design work is one of the more straightforward tasks among the 4 virtues. If a hiring manager can look at a design for the first time and understand where they are in a process, what is being asked of them, what options are available to them, then it’s already working on a fundamental level. Admittedly, the hiring manager will rarely be the target audience. Notwithstanding, the design candidate should be able to provide the context that the actual audience would already have.
Lastly, a discerning hiring manager can evaluate a design candidate’s level of expertise in clarity through their correspondence. Is their own messaging clear and accurate?
Clarity checklist for the designer:
- Is the information accurate and complete?
- Is the intended use obvious?
- Does it make sense?
- Do people understand the benefits?
- Is there any evidence to support that sufficient clarity was achieved?
Conclusion
Once again, AI simply cannot measure the clarity of a design solution. A deep understanding of the target customer and their mental model is needed to judge whether a design is sufficiently clear at all interaction points. If doubt or uncertainty enters the mind of your customers at any point along their journey, you run the risk of losing them for good.
In the following posts, I will cover the remaining two virtues of design, Harmony and Causality.
[1]: Been, Rachel. (03/21/2019). A New Religion for Designers. Google Design. https://design.google/library/john-maeda-interview-new-design-religion
[2]: Bradley, Steven. (3/29/2014). Design Principles: Visual Perception and the Principles of Gestalt. Smashing Magazine. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/03/design-principles-visual-perception-and-the-principles-of-gestalt/
[3]: Nielsen, Jakob. (4/24/1994). 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. NNGroup. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
[4]: Kasturika , Daniel Skrok and Christian Briggs. (2020). 14 UX Deliverables: What will I be making as a UX designer? Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/7-ux-deliverables-what-will-i-be-making-as-a-ux-designer
[5]: Copernicus, Nicolaus. (1543). De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Johannes Petreius (Nuremberg).
[6]: Trafton, Anne. (1/16/2014). In the blink of an eye. MIT News. https://news.mit.edu/2014/in-the-blink-of-an-eye-0116
[7]: Moran, Kate. (1/29/2017). The Aesthetic-Usability Effect. NNGroup. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/
[8]: Roberts, J., Meehan, P. (2010). Business Intelligence and Decision Impact. (Gartner)
[9]: Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind. Vintage.
[10]: Bob Iger Teaches Business Strategy and Leadership. MasterClass.
[11]: Walker, Tim. (4/10/2017). The big ideas that started on a napkin — from Reaganomics to Shark Week. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/shortcuts/2017/apr/10/napkin-ideas-mri-reaganomics-shark-week
*Thanks to Alyssa Rock for help with editing this series.
