Life is too beautiful for ugly design experience
Great design is invisible, they said. Great design should not make you think, they added. But why? Because the ultimate goal of great design is to make us feel nothing less than delighted.
How often do we, as users, question design and our experience with it? Can we remember that uncomfortable chair that we returned? Or that website that kept crashing? Or that instruction manual that we quickly gave up on? We have likely forgotten about most of these experiences, but they certainly left a lasting impression on our minds and influenced our future behavior — we never went back for more.
Once we form a negative association with a particular product, service, or brand, we simply go elsewhere. And that’s because our brains are programmed to minimize our energy expenditure — to avoid repeating what it already knows required a lot of our energy, time, and effort and resulted in no real benefit to us — and to, instead, focus that energy on finding new, potentially better alternatives that will bring that real benefit.
“Our brains are programmed to minimize our energy expenditure — to avoid repeating what it already knows required a lot of our energy, time, and effort and resulted in no real benefit to us — and to, instead, focus that energy on finding new, potentially better alternatives that will bring that real benefit.”
Being driven by this innate desire for ease, speed, and comfort, we will always seek something better — and design experiences are no exception. We’ll keep searching for experiences that are a bit more convenient, a bit more intuitive, and a bit more delightful than the last. Sure, if they’re okay, we may still allow them. If they’re good, we may repeat them. But if they’re great, we won’t just welcome and embrace them — we’ll fully integrate them into our everyday lives.
When we realize that we’ve been users since the beginning of humankind and that everything man-made was not only intentionally designed but also iteratively improved upon and positively approved by all previous generations, only then can we start to contemplate all our positive design experiences in a new, much more appreciative way.
“We may not always know what goes into creating a great experience, but we’ll always gladly reap the benefits of that labor.”
While we, as users, might not always be able to fully understand every bit of planning, researching, designing, testing, and redesigning that goes into creating each great experience, we will always gladly reap the benefits of that labor. And we definitely should because life is too beautiful for ugly design experiences.
So let’s celebrate all that’s convenient, intuitive, and delightful, and all the invisible minds behind it all. Designers are great because they let us all choose — one experience at a time — a world that’s even better.
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