'Making it Pop' – How UX Visual Design Principles can save us from choosing ‘Flash over Function’
Make it Pop
There is a common yet cliché phrase, used one too many times in the world of Web Design, which is to ‘Make it Pop’.
The intent behind this ambiguous phrase, usually stems from the belief that eye-catching and aesthetic web design can address a multitude of goals such as driving engagement and conversion rates.
Whilst creativity and innovation should not be overlooked – there is a real danger from taking too many creative liberties when designing a website.
Don’t Re-Invent the Wheel
Imagine you are walking through the aisles of a supermarket, with your shopping list in and a plan of action - but something doesn’t feel quite right?
You notice that the bread is where the milk usually is, the trolleys are in the middle of the shop, and the cash registers are hidden in the back. You have spent quite some time trying to find everything on your shopping list, but are now tired, fed up, and ready to go home empty handed.
This is frustrating, but common reality when it comes to web design. When a user visits your website, they expect certain elements to be in the same places as they have seen on other websites.
What is Jakob’s Law?
Jakob’s Law, named after the founding father of User Experience Design Jakob Nielson, is a visual design principle which states that: Users spend most of their time on other websites, rather than your website. Therefore, their cumulative experience of navigating other websites will inform how they expect your website to work.
When a user doesn’t have to think too hard to learn how your website works, their focus will be directed towards your products, services and offerings.
Take Amazon as an example. The familial step-by-step process of adding items to a ‘basket’ proceeding to checkout, entering shipping information and confirming purchase, is a well-established pattern that has subsequently been adopted by a majority of e-commerce websites. Any process which deviates from this pattern, usually results in a confused user, who will abandon their purchase halfway due to mental fatigue and frustration.
Anti UX - The ‘User Inyerface’ Game
Well designed User Experience tends to go unnoticed, as the whole point is to avoid making the user ‘think’ about the process they are following.
Anti-UX is a good experiment to highlight the importance of frictionless design, by demonstrating the polar opposite of it.
User Inyerface is a game which challenges users to ‘simply fill in a form’ as fast and as accurately as possible. However, the form is designed to deviate against all familiar patterns. This hilarious but infuriating process purposely sends you on a wild goose chase by tricking you into performing actions that lead you into a dead end.
At the start you are prompted to ‘Please click here to go to the next page’ and intuitively your cursor clicks on text which is highlighted an underlined, because that’s what a link should look like – right? Disappointingly you realise that you have been tricked, and the real link is hidden somewhere else on the page.
This game emphasises how hard it really is to get users to take action on a website, and why making navigation and call-to-actions which follow industry and platform conventions is more important than you think.
Conclusion: Function first - Aesthetics to enhance!
So, next time someone asks you to make a web design ‘pop’, remember that users won’t be interested in a website that is ‘too’ different from others they have used. Before putting your creative stamp on it, build upon a strong foundation of industry convention and familiar patterns, as this will ensure your message and content will be really engaged with.
References
Navigating Familiarity: Jakob’s Law in UX Design | by Jyoti Jyotshna Dash | Bootcamp
User Inyerface - A worst-practice UI experiment
Jakob's Law of Internet User Experience (2 min. video) (Video) (nngroup.com)