3 Designing on the Visceral Level
This chapter covers
- Embracing minimalism and simplicity: the key to beautiful and effective design
- Hands-on tips for mastering visual hierarchy, simplicity, and aesthetics
- Leveraging illustrations, animations, and words to craft emotionally resonant user experiences
- Proving usability and beauty with your users’ feedback
This chapter is all about the fine details: pixels, graphics, micro-interactions, and content. We’re about to focus on the crucial first impression your users get.
In digital product design, two things really shape how your design is perceived: usability and aesthetics. And one does not replace or compensate for the other. Both pillars need to be rock-solid. It’s the only way to achieve that next-level emotional design.
Usability focuses on smooth, efficient, and intuitive experiences. We are going to cover this later.
Aesthetics is about visual appeal.
The interface might be designed beautifully, but not that easy to navigate or hard to scan, which means it has poor usability. Or it can be clean and easy to go through but without anything catchy.
Surely, exceptions happen. In the case of B2B (business-to-business) products, people might be forced to use them because of some business obstacles, or the absence of any better alternatives. If there’s only one effective solution to a problem, it doesn’t need to be that beautiful.