Maturity in feature design

As we are now designing for a medium that has matured it interesting to see how this compares to the gap between good and bad design and how credibility of designs are now becoming more important to users perception of a site or app. There are many, many different facets to creating things that we can attribute value to; rules to guide us and those that we choose to ignore; conventions that we should adopt and those we try to change in our vain attempts to become innovative.

In much the same was a Technology empowered individuals to do their own desktop publishing for print in the late 1980’s and 1990’s; the same has been happening on the web and the gap between good and bad design is more visible for all to see because there are individuals how can do it no matter what their own skill level is. Therefore why pay someone else for something that someone can do themselves?

Before desktop publishing, professional typographers and printers who had learnt their skills had created print collateral where the difference between good and bad was narrower; poor design decisions where more difficult to identify without specialist knowledge. The arrival of Desktop publishing allowed any individual with a low level of skill, experience and expertise to assume the role of all of these to create something using only a basic technical level of understanding was needed to create something in print. Anything could be achievable at a low cost to the detriment of quality.

To illustrate another example, I used to love reading about (and trying to recreate) complex dishes served in the very best hotels and restaurants. But recently I picked up a book by arguably one of the best chefs IMHO – Micheal Roux. What surprised me about his dishes was that the recipes were elegant in their simplicity. They have been written by someone who truly understands as plate of food. They are meant for the home cook granted, and I am sure that in his restaurant its expertise and sheer number working in the kitchens in the execution of his dishes that are more complex. Understanding why this is and how it applies to design might be comparable to our own digital solutions.

I am a confirmed believer that creativity loves constraints and simplicity. Like a good plate of food it is as much about what you leave out as much as what you could add and the harmony that it extolls on the dinner; the aim of the chef is to let the dish be consumed as a whole without allowing ingredients to dictate the sum of the equation. The dish should speak for itself. Without this idea a dish only becomes a jarring cacophony of different flavours; some of which may work well together, others might be too strong or weak to work together simply. I won’t even go as far as to include interior décor, table setting or service quality; it is all about the mastery of the technique, consistency and quality that matters to the inspectors of the Michelin guide. (Oh, and they aren’t stars; they are Macaroons!).

Sometimes I just need a burger I hear you cry rather than a Michelin starred restaurant dish. There are good burgers and ones that I’d rather not have again; I like to judge a chef by their description of a burger – at the heart is a cheap, familiar and accessible product.

A chef who puts together a complex range of flavours relies more on self-confidence rather than arrogance to create that perfect plate. The intangibles matter more in the subliminal consious of the consumer in assessing it’s potential to be credible. In music, it is the tone not the effect that is important; in food, it’s about the combination of ingredients (as much as it is about flavour). On the web, it is combination of features as much as it is about how it helps me achieve something.

To this, my point about usability, design and user experience – it is less about including as many effects (ingredients) as possible that serve to distract, and much more about finding the balance between features and functions (less about noise) and much more about satisfying the mindset of a user. Maturity in creation is as much more about confidently leaving things out rather than forcing them in. Nielsen’s “Aesthetic and minimalist design” usability heuristic for User Interface Design supports this as a notion:

“Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility”.

The difference between arrogance and self-confidence is self-awareness. A complete dish of food is about an awareness of the ingredients and how they combine to work the best together as gracefully as they can by virtue of their combination to create flavour. With design it is about letting elements breath and have their own space; simple elegant things are easier to enjoy.