Chapter 9. Making It Look Good:
Visual Style and Aesthetics In 2002, a research group discovered something interesting. The Stanford Web Credibility Project[1] set out to learn what causes people to trust or distrust web sites, and much of what they found made intuitive sense: company reputation, customer service, sponsorships, and ads all helped users decide whether or not a web site was credible. [1] See http://credibility.stanford.edu.
But the most important factornumber one on their listwas the appearance of the web site. Users did not trust sites that looked amateurish. Sites that made the effort to craft a nice, professionally designed look made a lot more headway with users, even if those users had few other reasons to trust the site. Here's another data point. Donald Norman, one of the best-known gurus of interaction design, concluded that "positive affect enhances creative, breadth-first thinking whereas negative affect focuses cognition, enhancing depth-first processing and minimizing distractions." He added that "Positive affect makes people more tolerant of minor difficulties and more flexible and creative in finding solutions."[2] Interfaces actually become more usable when people enjoy using them. [2] See Donald Norman, "Emotion and Design: Attractive Things Work Better," at http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/Emotion-and-design.html. See also his book on the subject, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (Basic Books).
Looking good matters. For many chapters now, we've talked about the structure, form, and behavior of an application; now we'll focus more on its "skin" or its "look-and-feel." Chapter 4, Layout, discussed some graphic design basics. That chapter covered visual hierarchy, visual flow, focal points, and the Gestalt principles of proximity, similarity, continuity, and closure. These topics form the foundation of page organization, and should not be shortchanged. But there's more to a nice house than just its room layout, though. When you pay for a well-designed new house, you also expect beautiful carpets, paint colors, wall textures, and other surface treatments. Without them, a house can be perfectly functional but uninspiring. Completing the job means paying attention to detail, fit, and finish. Beautiful details don't necessarily affect the efficiency with which people accomplish tasks in the house or interface (although research indicates that it sometimes does). But they certainly affect whether or not people enjoy it. That, in turn, affects other behaviorlike how long they linger and explore, whether they choose to go there again, and whether they recommend it to other people. You could even think about it as a moral issue. What kind of experience do you want your users to have? Do you want to give them an all-gray application that bores them, or a flashy ad-filled application that irritates them? Would you rather give them something they enjoy looking at, maybe for hours at a time? Of course, far more than visual style influences a user's emotional response (affect). Chapter 1 began discussing other considerations, such as how well you anticipate their usage habits. Software can pleasantly surprise people with considerate design. Tightly packed layouts evoke a different affective response than sparse, open layouts. Language and verbal tone play a huge part in this response, as does the quality of the software itselfdoes it "just work," and is it fast and responsive? A well-designed interface takes all of these factors into account. When content, meaning, and interactive behavior all work in concert with your visual style, you can evoke a chosen emotional response very effectively. With products and web sites, stylistic elements are often designed to support branding. The design of any software product or site expresses something about the organization that produced it (even if it's a loosely-knit group of open-source developers). It might say something neutral, or it might send a focused message: "You can trust us," "We're cool," "We build exciting things." A brand identity encompasses more than just a logo and tagline. It runs throughout an organization's product designs, its web site, and its advertising materialsin fact, the brand's chosen color schemes, fonts, iconography, and vocabulary show up everywhere. When planned well, a complete brand identity is coherent and intentional. A brand identity is important because it establishes familiarity and sets expectations for someone's experience with an organization's products. Ultimately, a good brand should make people feel better about using those products. Look at what Apple was able to do with brand loyalty: many people love Apple products and seek them out. In any case, whether or not they are intended to support a brand, stylistic elements make statements about your product. They communicate attributes like reliability, excitement, playfulness, energy, calmness, strength, tension, and joy. What do you want to communicate? This chapter discusses more visual design concepts, this time focusing less on formal structure and more on these emotionally based attributes. The chapter won't make an artist out of youthat takes serious practice and study. But the patterns capture some techniques commonly found on well-designed artifacts and explain why they work. |
