User Experience

Designing for User Experience: How Proximity Affects Visual Design

Which shaped belong to the group? The proximity of the shapes explains the answer.

Proximity is one of the Principles of Design. The proximity of objects in a composition can create relationships between visual elements, relevance, hierarchy, organization, and structure. It can also dispel connections between visuals which breaks organization and structure.

If you want to use visual design to communicate with an audience in a way that is universally understood and intuitive you’ll need to learn about proximity.

Proximity is used for three main reasons:

• To Create Connections

Proximity can create relationships between visual elements in a composition, create relevance, hierarchy, organization and structure. People’s universal understanding of ‘grouping’ and ‘likeness’ helps guide them. When shapes are cluttered and people have to move their eyes from one side of a page to the other to connect ideas you risk losing them.

Let’s look …

Which art university webpage design explains where on the page things are connected? Look at the small red icons, similar in color and shape, in the design on the LEFT, which instantly conveys sameness. Each of those elements has a red icon, a bold title, a few lines of text in the same font, and a button under — conveying sameness by way of proximity as much as color and shape.

• To Dispel Connections