Peur Du Vide — The Fear of Emptiness
Studying history as a course in my high school was something I was never genuinely welcome about. The idea of having to learn what happened before , interpret the mistakes and ponder about some of the worlds biggest triumphs never excited me.
But ever since I dived into the realm of technology , design and aesthetics have always been the point of fascination I obsessed about. How something as simple as a button , and it’s color has the capacity to make or break an application.
I agree. I am a hypocrite. While I never liked history, Ive always been charmed by the way design language has evolved around us. How we have grown from the clutter that was the AOL website back in 1990s to the dynamics and intricacies woven into the products today. This article is to look into exactly what governed the design rules formerly.
A PARADIGM SHIFT
The best approach to represent the progression in design rules , is to show how Art has evolved from 100+ years.
This was art then ,
And this is what we call modern art ,
This comparison is not to draw any dispute about the merits of the two art styles or what they represent. These images best exhibit how design principles have evolved from being cluttered with information , and have progressed into a new territory of token essentials or minimalism.
Everything from art, all the way down to product commercials have embraced this shift in paradigm.
Until a few years ago , design principles were established and prescribed by the fear of emptiness. Both producers and consumers of content believed that vacuum on canvas meant meager information in hand , and was thus said to have constituted a fragile identity.
DICTATING THE NATURE OF THOUGHT
I’ve shown this image to quite a lot of people during my workshops. The one question I ask them , is “ What exactly is the difference between the two stores ?” They both sell mobiles. Almost every response gravitates towards the curated nature of design and how one seems to feel premium while the other does not. What brought about such a response, is the personality of the design adopted in both stores. One is flashy trying to have every promotion and offer right in front of our faces while the other has space and room for the consumer to breathe the layout exhibited and thus entice the customer to associate with the product to be sold.
This is how design dictates one’s thoughts and how people associate design language to what you have to offer.
High-Density and cluttered design — Cheap and mass market
Low-Desinsity and Minimalistic Design — Premium and Valuable
Hicks Law
I have always dreamt about being a math wiz , but this law is probably the closest i will ever get to at least look like one. Without getting into the depths of this law is ( Well if you really want to get deeper after reading this check this wonderful article out ) , essentially it provides a relationship between the amount of content in front of an individual and the time it takes for the person to respond to that content.
It is pretty evident how the reaction time of an individual proportionally increases with the increase in the number of options/information in front of him.
A user is what drives the application. The existence of almost every software application thrives on users investing something extremely crucial , time. A design that adheres to Hick’s law is one that respects a customer by respecting their investment. Providing information that a user needs with enough space on screen for them to travel and contemplate without being bombarded by unnecessary distractions is good design. Not just because it looks good and classy , but because user retention is guaranteed by not abusing an user’s time.
The primary objective of hick’s law is to analyze the data/information to be provided to the user , categorize the indispensables and obscure the rest by realizing the —
- Essential Information and
- Secondary Information
CONCLUSION
This article is to show how design is progressing today. The shift in paradigm might feel something obvious if we think of it like a consumer primarily because we have been using programs that adhere to this design language , it’s only when we look back into our own designs as a developer that we realize we haven't fully progressed.
Though today many our shifting to modern design languages like Material Design and Zora , a lot are still stuck with older archetype of information curation. Also, its hard to blame anyone when all of us try to make the best of designs on a medium called Hyper TEXT Markup Language. A platform that was originally designed to display countless lines of text and nothing more.
It’s never too late to evolve your designs. If it makes you feel any better , here is how the king of great designs, the design extraordinaire Apple used to design their sites before. ( A lot more about evolution in another post probably :) )
