The Invisible Design: How Good UI/UX Becomes Unseen
In the UI/UX design world, there’s a quest for an almost paradoxical achievement — Invisible Design. This is when the design and flow are so instinctive that they go unnoticed, enabling users to focus solely on their tasks.
Understanding invisible design involves delving into several key UX laws, and there are few better ways to illustrate this than by analyzing some of the most successful designs in the digital realm.
Unpacking UX Laws for Invisible Design
Achieving invisible design is guided by several fundamental UX laws. While there are many more, we will focus on a few that are most relevant to our topic. Let’s delve deeper into these laws.
Law of Prägnanz: Simplicity
This law is derived from psychology and asserts that people will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images in the simplest form possible. In terms of UX design, it means minimizing the cognitive load on users by presenting information in its simplest, most comprehensible form.
For example, Google’s homepage is an excellent embodiment of this law. It’s clean, uncluttered, and easy to understand at a glance.
Jakob’s Law: Familiarity
This law states that if your website or app behaves in a way that’s familiar to your users, they’re more likely to understand how to use it and find it easier to navigate. Essentially, using common design elements and structures can make your design more user-friendly as people don’t have to learn new ways of doing things.
Take the example of a shopping cart on e-commerce websites. No matter what website you’re shopping on, the cart icon is almost universally recognized. Users expect that clicking on this icon will show them the items they have chosen to purchase. This is a standard that makes online shopping more intuitive and less time-consuming for users.
Tesler’s Law: Intuition
Also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, this rule means that every app or website has some level of complexity — it’s part of the deal. But good designers work hard to handle most of this complexity on the backend, keeping things as simple and user-friendly on the front end.
Imagine a smartphone settings menu: instead of showing all options on the main screen, they’re neatly organized within a settings menu. This is Tesler’s Law in action — keep the complex stuff hidden while creating an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.
Hick’s Law: Decision Time
This law states that the time it takes for a person to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. This is incredibly important in UI/UX design where the goal is often to allow users to make quick decisions.
Consider the navigation bar on the Apple website. It’s a classic example of applying Hick’s Law. They keep the number of options in the navigation bar limited, so users can quickly decide where they want to go. By using this law, Apple helps create a smooth, ‘invisible’ user experience.
Invisible Design in Action
Consider two well-known examples of invisible design that I really like: Google and Spotify. In my opinion, they both brilliantly personify this concept, each with UI/UX elements that effectively ‘disappear’ as users interact with them.
Dominating the global market with a 92.18% share as of June 2023 (Statista), Google’s minimalist search engine interface serves as an ideal case study for invisible design. The design is stripped down to its most essential elements: a logo, search bar, and two buttons — “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky”. This minimalist approach reflects the Law of Prägnanz, which posits that users will interpret ambiguous or complex images in the simplest form possible. The clean white space, limited options, and intuitive placement of elements allow the user to focus solely on their task — searching.
For users, this translates into a focused, efficient, and satisfying search experience.
For designers, it demonstrates how removing superfluous elements can spotlight the most crucial functionality, making the design more straightforward and effective.
Spotify
Spotify, with its 345 million active users as of 2023, is another great example of invisible design. Spotify’s interface is dominated by familiar visual elements that are instinctively understandable: play/pause buttons, volume controls, and scrolling track lists. This caters to Jakob’s Law, which suggests users prefer your site to work similarly to other sites they already know.
Moreover, Spotify expertly manages complexity according to Tesler’s Law. Take it's “Discover Weekly” feature — it’s a highly sophisticated algorithm that analyzes your listening habits, compares them with others, and delivers a personalized playlist every week. All this complexity is hidden behind an easy-to-click playlist that magically seems to ‘know’ the user’s taste. This makes the intricate behind-the-scenes technology invisible to users.
For users, Spotify’s familiar visual cues and smart personalization make the interface intuitive and engaging.
For designers, it’s a lesson on utilizing commonly accepted design patterns and managing complexity effectively. This approach reduces the time spent on designing novel patterns and focuses on improving the user experience.
The Challenge: Retaining Personality in Invisible Design — How?
In our quest for invisible design, it might seem like there’s little room for individuality or uniqueness. After all, if we’re adhering to established patterns and principles, how can we create something truly unique? This is a challenge many designers face, especially when striving for ‘unseen’ interfaces that prioritize user familiarity and simplicity over groundbreaking aesthetics.
However, the pursuit of invisible design doesn’t mean sacrificing creativity or the unique identity of your product. Here are a few ways you can maintain individuality in your designs while still adhering to the principles of invisible design:
Brand Identity
Your brand’s identity — its mission, values, and personality — can be subtly expressed through the UI/UX design. Consider the typography, color schemes, imagery, and even the microcopy.
Google’s playful doodles on their search page, for example, add a unique flavor to an otherwise minimalist interface. This approach helps you maintain a distinctive brand presence without disrupting the user’s task flow.
Distinctive Features
While the main functionality should remain simple and intuitive, you can incorporate unique, distinctive features that provide added value to your users.
For example, consider Slack’s unique approach to team collaboration. Slack introduced the concept of “channels”, which is a simple yet groundbreaking way of organizing team communication. It was a distinctive feature that set Slack apart from other communication tools but was intuitive enough for users to understand and adopt swiftly. It is these types of features that balance simplicity with uniqueness and help your product stand out from the crowd.
Data-driven Personalization
Leveraging user data for personalized experiences can be a game-changer.
Think of Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’ or Netflix’s recommendation system. These features offer unique value to the user and set the product apart from competitors while staying within the realm of invisible design.
User Co-Creation
Involving users in the design process is a powerful way to maintain a product’s unique identity. This involvement can range from allowing users to customize themes and layouts, as seen in apps like Trello, to incorporating user-generated content, as platforms like Reddit and Wikipedia have done.
Trello users can personalize their boards with different background colors or images, enabling them to create a unique, personalized workspace. On the other hand, Reddit and Wikipedia are primarily driven by their users’ contributions, making each subreddit or article unique in its content and community interaction. Not only does user co-creation enhance engagement, but it also cultivates a unique product experience that is continually defined and redefined by its users.
Innovative Features
Delivering unique features that enhance the user experience can make your product stand out, even while adhering to the principles of invisible design.
For example, the “Swipe to Archive” feature in the Gmail App is a functional innovation that remains intuitive to use.
So, while striving for invisible design, remember not to sacrifice the unique aspects that give your product its identity. Just ensure that these elements don’t compromise the user experience but, instead, add value to it.
In Conclusion: Striking the Balance
We’ve explored the concept of invisible design, dissected its principles, and seen its application in practice. Additionally, we’ve confronted the task of retaining unique characteristics within this framework of intuitive and seamless design.
It’s a delicate balancing act, isn’t it? But as we’ve seen, it’s not an insurmountable one. Companies like Google, Spotify, Slack, and many others manage to create unique, memorable user experiences without sacrificing usability and intuitiveness.
I’d love to hear about your experiences dealing with this balance between invisible design and uniqueness. Have you ever felt your creativity was constrained by the pursuit of invisibility? How have you managed to infuse your personality into your designs without hindering usability?
Share your thoughts and experiences, and let’s continue the conversation. After all, it is through this exchange of ideas that we grow and evolve, both as individuals and as a community of designers!
Happy designing!
V. 💜
