One of the most difficult expectations for me to overcome with respect to my coworkers is the idea that I’m here to simply make the software look pretty. It’s difficult for so many to understand. I do understand principles of typography, layout, color, and design in general…and yes, I do have the ability to decorate an app to make it seem “prettier” to the untrained eye.
The thing is, I’m not necessarily here to apply typographical, layout, color, etc. changes to a system. Before that can happen, the tool has to have a logical flow. Input fields that are displayed have to make sense. Everything that has been placed on the screen up to this point must be there for a reason. I take it as my first job to understand exactly why you’ve placed that input box above that drop-down menu, for example. Sometimes this part of my job is easy. Other times it is not.
My point is that I will not (and cannot) make your system look nice unless the basic interaction part is already taken care of. In fact, having a cordial interaction with the user is core to the system looking nice. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the colors themselves don’t matter if the user can’t figure out what he’s supposed to do.
The UI needs tending, and it can’t just be fixed at one point in the process…beginning, middle, or end. It needs attention throughout the design and implementation phases. Each development iteration can also be an interface design iteration. Slowly but surely I’m learning that it’s not a good idea to just try to save an interface in one fell swoop. Everybody involved in the software development process should take this lesson to heart as well.
For now, I’ll keep busy on projects chugging away at finding interactions that make little sense from a user’s perspective and helping to ameliorate these issues. It’s my hope for each project that one day I’ll get to the point where I can help the user have an experience that is not only easy, but fulfilling and emotionally pleasing as well.
4 responses to “"Pretty" Software Applications”
All very good points, but it is amazing how the two — getting the flow and usability of a site right and the beauty of the site — merge together and complement one another. The more usable an interface becomes, the more beautiful it becomes; the two are directly linked.
“My point is that I will not (and cannot) make your system look nice unless the basic interaction part is already taken care of.” My point is that as you fix the basic interaction the site will also improve aesthetically.
The reverse may not necessarily be true though. I have seen many “pretty” websites that were almost unusable. I put the word pretty in quotes because I actually think this is a skewed idea of what makes a pretty website. I personally think that, when defining a site as pretty, one must include the site’s usability.
You are not alone out there in the world where the majority think that the core job of a designer is to make things pretty and that the work of a designer is like a work of an artist! But if the fundamentals of the product is broken, pretty design cannot save the product.
I think about it a lot, almost everyday – what can be done to change this thinking. Yes, we can do our part and do our best to advocate for what design process should be, but designers are not always the decision makers. Its almost like designers and non-designers (people who think designing is prettying) work for the same company, have shared goals but speak completely different languages!
Excellent post! Nothing worse being brought in to advise on colours and fonts and layouts and usability when the fundamentals of the interaction design suck. Nothing worse than ending an iteration with a showcase of working functionality (“it does what it says on the card”) yet doesn’t fit into the overall flow, the user journey…
In some ways Agile Development seems to make the aesthetic ‘visual design’ element harder. If I know there are 7 tabs along the top of the page, I can factor that into my choice of layout grid, for example. If the next iteration adds 2 more tabs, my design may fall apart. If I’m aiming for perfection – trying to make it so that every little thing is balanced visually, it seems horrible to be told ‘but it won’t stay like this for longer than 2 weeks’.
Are we accepting that the best looking web app, for example, with complex interaction, will never look as good as the best designed, fixed size printed brochure?