Design is not meant to be seen but experienced. With that being said web design is full of trends and trend followers. One of the latest trends that we’ve jumped on the wagon for is flat design. This trend continues to plow ahead with the announcements by Apple yesterday at WWDC in respect to the new Yosemite OSX. A few designers have tried to fight this fad while stating that design is dead.
However, we can’t help ourselves. We continue to produce new work that follows the flat trend. We were destined to follow in the footsteps of others. Humans by nature are wired to conform. We are social creatures and we want to be apart of the group. We never want to be that lone outsider, the ugly duckling, off doing our own thing. What if I told you that this is a mistake? That we need to learn to separate ourselves from the pack in order to help create trusting experiences with our audiences. You would probably think I’m a bit crazy, but hear me out.
Recently, Harvard published a study showing that people who can stand out in a crowd have an easier time gaining respect and are believed to be more trustworthy than those conforming to the crowd around them. For example, high-end retailers have said that they assume a person has more money, status and class if they walk into their stores wearing nothing but workout clothes. They see them as being celebrities, just trying to hide from the public eye. In contrast, when retailers see those who have done themselves up in furs, jewels and makeup as being fakes. I guess Pretty Woman had it wrong then and they should have waited on Julia Roberts when she was dressed like a hooker.
We’ve seen this conformist nature in our designs. Look at any CSS gallery or award show. There is a standard look to each of them. For example, they all include a large opening image, attention grabbing messages placed on top of the image, and some sort of scrolling effect to read more. Have we done this because it’s great design and the right solution for our clients? On a conscious level, we would answer yes. We would argue that we’ve created a great user experience, but subconsciously, we would know that we are just conforming to a style that works. Steve Jobs once was quoted saying that “Good artists copy; Great artists steal!”. We’re an industry of great artists. We’ve stolen a stylist technique that worked in a couple of cases and have used it across the board. In fact, we’ve never stopped to consider that it might not be the best solution for the audience.
Take a collapsed menu example using the “hamburger” icon. Over the past several months there have been A/B tests performed to determine if this is a good approach. These studies have actually shown that by using the icon, we could be losing out on about 50% of user engagement. That presenting a design in this style and with the other layout features mentioned above, you are turning the audience off from using your product. By conforming to design trends like flat design, we are losing the personality of what makes each site and the company behind it unique. We need to step back and review our stylistic decisions. We need to ask ourselves do they really offer up the best experiences for our audiences? To build a trusting relationship with audiences, our design decisions have to be based on what style and personality is best for making connections and communicating to our audiences, not what is winning awards on design galleries.
##The Crazy Ones
I do believe there are designers who have taken this into consideration and have gained our respect in doing so. These individuals don’t always follow the trends. They introduce us to new techniques and open our eyes to nonconformist design decisions. For example, Simon Collison was one of the first designers I’d heard of that designed his portfolio to be adaptive back in 2010. He used a combination of beautiful illustrations, not the cartoon kind you see on a lot of sites but rather a series of illustrations you would likely see in a science textbook. He and Aaron Gustafson then sprinkled a bit of media queries throughout the CSS to build one of the earliest and best examples of adaptive designs. This was before responsive or adaptive design had become main stream. Mostly people were still experimenting with the ideas around responsive design but no one had really pushed out a great example. Simon was one of the first to provide a quality example that we could base our future designs against. In fact, beyond some minor changes, Simon’s site hasn’t changed that much over the last four years because it is such a strong example. Another example is actually in the design workflow presented by Brad Frost. Over the past year or so, Brad has been discussing techniques and challenging what we call a design deliverable. He’s offered techniques and ideas that are beginning to change the way we think about the individual components of design and how they can be organized to improve responsive layouts. At first, the idea of atomic design seemed a bit out there especially to clients, who only want to see the final product, but as we began to conform to this idea, we saw the brilliance behind the techniques. So what have we done? Well, we’ve jumped on the bandwagon and created whole frameworks to use like pattern labs. In fact, even Wirefy has been built from the ground up in this fashion because it made sense and made the framework easier to work with.
At times, these designers offer new techniques, designs and information that seems a little bit crazy like atomic design, but then we see the truth in what they are saying or doing and jump on their bandwagons. Why? Because we want to be a part of their crowd whether it be for fame, status or just to be considered good and relevant. More often than not, we grab hold of these practices without adapting or evolving them further. We just blindly conform because these innovators seem right. Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive are two other examples of individuals who always play to their own tune. If you look at mobile device design before this pair introduced us to the iPhone, it was diverse, ranging in sizes, colors and capabilities. No two phones were the same. But now, in the post iPhone world, all devices look the same minus a small detail here or there and it’s in those small design details based on hours of discussion that make the original better than the rest.
##Breaking ground
The people who offer new ways of looking at the world aren’t always the first movers or inventing new markets all the time. They are however taking the time to make particular, deep decisions about why they are designing a solution a certain way. They have the creative confidence to explore new ideas. There is a fundamental differences between the crazy ones who go against the grain and offer us new ideas and those who follow after. The decisions that these leaders needed to make in creating their designs were analyzed, fought over, reiterated on a thousand times over, but in the end they made the design look so simple. They can be justify every design without creating an elaborate story to why each design element is the way it is. The rest of us view these designs, critique and use them as benchmarks to steal from without knowing the underlying decisions that took place. We understand the theories of great design and talk a lot about it but we rarely go off and provide a truly unique solution with the deeper understanding that comes along the technique.
Let’s take a look at design before the web and look at how whole generations of classic artists followed trends then too. We can look at designers like Rosemarie Tissi and Paul Rand, who were amazing art directors that pushed the limits of design. They didn’t necessarily create whole new design styles but they certainly influenced trends during their time. They created layouts that made you stop in your tracks and think. They took techniques that were popular and evolved them for each piece they created in a smart decisive way. Beyond that they inspired their entire industries to create similar layouts, but nothing ever came close to the success that the original creators had. The reason for this is that they knew why they were putting every element together. In a similar fashion to Brad’s Frost atomic design, they put elements together that needed to be there to get their message across. They didn’t need to look at design galleries and see what others were doing at the time, except maybe to be introduced to a new typeface, but instead used their knowledge of communicating a message in the best way to their benefit. Others have tried to copy their success as we all do but there is always one ingredient missing, the deeper understanding of why the designer made the choices that they made. This deeper understanding is what made these designs so timeless. To this day, even in our web layouts, we are trying to mimic the inspirations of these designers.
We talk a lot about what makes for brilliant user experience but then neglect it by pulling together inspirations and trends from all over the place. Instead, we need to take the approach of Jonathan Ive, Paul Rand and Rosemarie Tissi by analyzing each problem and make our design decisions on a solution that fits. It may mean that your design won’t win Site of The Day, but it will probably increase your users engagement and overall communication success. Learn from the techniques and ideas that others have introduced us to and adapt them to further your knowledge and understanding. You can’t always try to revolutionize everything.
##Working with Contraints
There are times though when you need to conform to certain constraints and paradigms. Even the best designers and artists know this. For example, say you are invited to a black tie dinner and you show up in a track suit instead. Everyone would wonder what’s wrong with you and what are you actually doing there. Unlike the high end retail situation mentioned above, you wouldn’t gain respect from your peers or audience because you didn’t follow an unspoken constraint. You’ve gone in the opposite direction causing your audience to be confused by what you are doing.
Now relating this same principle to web design and the hamburger icon. When designers started to introduce this technique for menus, we confused our audiences. As an industry, we might be familiar with the three bar icon to represent a menu but the general public using the site aren’t. This is why we’ve seen a drop in our engagement numbers. Sure it looks good and opens up a lot of real estate but does it make sense. Are we gaining the trust and understanding from our audience that we are hoping to achieve or are we showing up to a black tie party in sweatpants?
You need to understand when it makes sense to go against the grain of conformity and when it’s the right move to design a piece that conforms to the trends around you. However, be ready to stand up for your position if you think the conformed solution to a problem doesn’t make any sense. Say you are working with someone who refuses to go against the conformed design option spend some time playing devil’s advocate with them. Speaking up for what you believe is the right direction to design in can be one of the best strategies for preserving your respectable place in a group while still presenting an offbeat idea. Test your theories will help you provide even more support. Usually the person who can bring an alternative point of view to a group has examined all the options and will help guide the group to a better overall design. This can apply to dealing with clients as well. If your client trusts your intentions and the perspective is taken seriously then you have a higher chance of successfully applying the design idea to the group and pushing yourself into a perceived leadership role.
Even if you are presenting an offbeat solution make sure you work within the constraints set by the audience’s understanding and perception of how things should work. Within the web design world, we follow all kinds of constraints. We use grids, file structures and coding languages in a certain way. We work hard maintain these constraints while allowing some flexible for them to grow and adapt to new technologies and paradigms.
We need to work within our established constraints but offer new educated perspectives into finding the right decision. Drill down to the rooted personality within company and deliver on that. Use the developed language so that everyone involved can be on the same page but don’t fall into the traps of blind conformity. Remember not every design trend decision is the right one for every communication problem.
##Conclusion
To conclude, treat your designs like a promise to your audiences. Create designs that work within their conformed perceptions of how things should work while still pushing the boundaries of what great design should be. Make design decisions based on facts, usability and innovation rather than following the last fad. Create trust and respect with your audience by offering real experiences that have been design specifically for them. You’ll find that your audience will spend more time listening to what you have to say. Use conformed constraints as a guide so that your audience understands your end deliverable, but refine the decisions to be unique and stand out from the crowd. Be a leader in sweatpants, rather than a follower in high end fashion.
###Further Reading
