A Commandment For Digital Designers — Make Form & Function Work Together
In the hectic world of digital product development that often operates with a constant pressure to “break things” and ship new features FAST, many companies focus on simply making their products functional and reliable. Usability becomes the benchmark of design for these teams and their foremost objective is to get users to perform task A or task B as quickly and efficiently as possible. This was especially rampant during the early days of the web, when consumers expected only functional and usable products and were happy to adopt if a product met their needs.
The architect Louis Sullivan is famously credited with the quote below in an interview he did for skyscrapers.
“Form Follows Function”
150 years later, the principle is still relevant and is interpreted to suggest that form is less important than function in today’s world of digital media.
However, I don’t agree with the notion that functionality is the only imperative for design. Just imagine all websites carrying out a similar task like shopping being identical to each other. How boring would that be?
With changing times, our expectations have evolved. The most popular sites and apps are designed not simply for performing a task but for eliciting the emotions their users care about: of pleasure, fun and delight. Through well-balanced combination of form and function, these interfaces not only help their users complete a critical task, but also put a smile on their face and compel them to spread the idea to their friends and communities.
This is the secret weapon that makes companies like Apple, AirBnB or Dropbox win the love of their users and become the envy of their competitors. In these products one can see form and function sharing a more symbiotic relationship creating a layer of communication between the user and the product that is up and over the basic functionality.
“Good design means that beauty and usability are in balance.”
Don Norman
There are a number of tactics designers use to add a layer of personality that spark this feeling and build such emotional connections with their users. I’ll cover all aspects of emotional design in detail in a follow up post. Today, lets talk about something that is the most crucial element and triggers “Love at First Sight” — Aesthetics :)
Every design has some kind of aesthetic. Users see and judge it based on the beauty they perceive in it. We all enjoy looking at aesthetically pleasing design, because it satisfies our senses and gives us pleasure. More than functional information, what is more important is which emotions the product evokes first up. As designers, we never get a second chance to make a first impression, so we must appeal to our users’ senses.
Aesthetically pleasing interfaces are absolutely worth the investment. Many studies have concluded that users are strongly influenced by the aesthetics of any given interface, even before they evaluate the underlying functionality of the system. A bad looking product triggers negative emotion and can compel the user to start believing that the interaction with the product will not be fun. On the other hand, visual designs that appeal to users make the site appear orderly and professional, making them more likely to be tried. For so long we have known that readers judge the book by its cover. The better the book cover the more it’s believed the content is better. This is totally applicable for interface designs as well.
Even post the first impression, aesthetic designs have significant implications regarding continued use and performance of a product. Positive relationships with a design evoke feelings of affection, loyalty, and patience — all significant factors in the long-term usability and overall success of a product. Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as more usable or easier to use than less-aesthetic ones. Good aesthetics often mask usability problems and make users more tolerant of minor usability issues. Apple products like iTunes, iMovie, and even the iPhone aren’t devoid of usability flaws. But their fans are more tolerant towards them, considerably more than what we would be towards any other less well-designed piece of software.
Having said that, bear in mind that attractiveness bias is a short-lived effect. Once that “wow factor” has died down, it’s the utility of a site that holds the attention. A pretty design can make users more forgiving of minor usability problems, but not of larger ones. When interfaces suffer from severe usability issues, users tend to lose patience and abandon the product.
Also designers that don’t strike a perfect balance between form and function can pay a big price. The change from a skeuomorphic aesthetic to flat one is an example where some designers took the aesthetics a bit too far. They forgot about the underlying function, reliability, and usability and everything broke. Instead of delighting, the aesthetic started to annoy.
To summarize, with the rapid evolution of technology, face value is more crucial than ever, and that is entirely controlled by the aesthetic that the brand portrays. However, form and function work better when they get along and not when either forgets the other. Form can lead and influence function at times, but it should not replace it. Form without function isn’t design, its just form (art).