![]() Limit the amount of “noise” in your design. National Geographic’s website effectively uses scale, visual hierarchy, balance, contrast, and Gestalt principles to create an aesthetically-pleasing, usable design. There are many visual-design attributes that impact whether a design will be aesthetically pleasing, but focusing on five main visual-design principles can ensure effective visual communication. How To Make an Aesthetic and Minimalist Design Communicate visually by using known design principles. In most browsers, hover over the video to display the controls if they're not already visible. The mobile version of is information-dense, with important navigational items on the bottom of the screen, and low-opacity progress indicators layered behind the section headings along the top of the screen. However, it satisfies the heuristic in its approach of featuring sufficient information, and only sufficient information. , a site that features in-depth Myers Briggs personality assessments, has a notably nonminimalist visual style: highly textured and intricate visuals elements and fully utilized pages with little whitespace. Thus, while it may follow the minimalist design trend, it does not satisfy the heuristic, because it does not have necessary information in an easily findable place. ![]() The HelloBar homepage is extremely minimalist in visual style however, there is not sufficient information about what the company does or what features are available. Thus, minimalist visual design (sometimes referred to as flat design) does not always satisfy this heuristic by default (and is often guilty of removing necessary elements), and similarly, designs that satisfy this heuristic are not obligated to be minimalist. Even if our intentions are good as we smother our users in information that could be useful “at some point,” if our users cannot find or discover the necessary elements, as far as they are concerned, those elements do not exist. Having too few elements would inhibit utility and usability with the absence of necessary elements, while too many elements will obscure those necessary elements. ![]() In other words, a good design should strive to maximize utility and usability with just enough elements on the page. A minimalist design, according to this heuristic, is one that limits the amount of “noise” an interface has in order to emphasize necessary information it is a design that seeks to simplify interfaces by removing unnecessary elements or content that does not support user tasks.Īn important corollary to this definition is: a minimalist design contains all necessary elements to support user tasks. So, for the purposes of this heuristic, minimalist does not refer to a site that is following the minimalism trend.įor context, in 1994, the Internet largely consisted of crowded web pages, full to the brim of relevant and irrelevant information alike - “noisy” design, so to speak. Keep in mind, when this heuristic was written in 1994, there was no minimalist web-design trend. Let’s take a look at the other component of the heuristic, minimalist design. When used consistently, aesthetics can establish or reinforce a brand and its credibility. Aesthetics establish and reinforce your brand’s identity. ![]() As Don Norman has said, “attractive things work better.” This first impression is so powerful, that people often recall beautiful designs as easy to use despite potential usability issues that may have actually come up during use.ģ. The perception of the experience can be more memorable than the experience itself. So, unfortunately, teams cannot rely only on good, usable functionality and content for an experience to be perceived as usable.Ģ. Visuals are essential to establishing good first impressions. As much as we would like otherwise, people do “judge the book by its cover.” On average, users make an aesthetics-driven first impression about a site in the 50 milliseconds after landing on it, which is about 10x faster than the time it takes to read. ![]() Why Not Just “Minimalist” Design? Do Aesthetics Really Matter?ġ. Every extra unit of information in an interface competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. Interfaces should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Don Norman cited this famous William Morris quote at the beginning of his book Emotional Design 1 and it captures the essence of the 8th usability heuristic: aesthetic and minimalist design: ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |