The Artful Edge

Navigating the Role of Arts and Aesthetics in User Experiences

Looking back, I am thankful for having lived in Rio de Janeiro for the first couple of decades of my life. While it seemed natural then, today I realize that the place could be described as a city in technicolor, where vibrancy, saturation, and pure natural exuberance were at their full volume. ?? Among other things, those formative years not only taught me the value of aesthetics, appreciating beauty, and the basic principles of creating and experiencing art, but they also helped me explore and understand questions about perception and taste.

As I later began practicing design, the judgment of aesthetics and artistic expression became a daily occurrence. The role of the audience in interpreting and appreciating artworks continued to dominate how I looked at the success of illustrations, brand design, and motion graphics. After all, understanding what makes something aesthetically pleasing or meaningful, and how it affects our experience and perception of the world, is often what differentiates one design from another. But still, it seems evident to me that the practice of art and design stand worlds apart. This is especially true if we are talking about UX design, where function will almost always supersede form.

With that said, as artificial intelligence becomes more commonplace and equally powerful in every piece of software we use, it is likely that designers will continue to simplify user experiences further, stripping away their most expressive moments and inadvertently making them look even more alike. For this reason, I believe the infusion of arts and aesthetics will create tangible differentiation and swing the pendulum from merely wanting to use an experience to genuinely loving it.

“As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore. AI is what computers can’t do. Once they can it’s just software”.

As this quote from John McCarthy suggests, all the AI innovation and subsequent hype we are witnessing will likely, feature by feature, become expected. If that's the case, how will experiences stand apart? Despite clear motivations and potential business advantages, I find it surprising how rarely arts and aesthetics initiatives are prioritized. Perhaps what lies ahead is an opportunity for them to become a critical priority, going beyond beautiful decks and vision videos.

Looking back and ahead

The integration of aesthetics into UX design can be traced back to the mid-20th century with the emergence of HCI (human-computer interaction). Back then, it was industrial design that contributed the most in recognizing the importance of aesthetics in creating user-friendly and visually appealing designs. Later, it began influencing the field of UX design, emphasizing aesthetics in the overall user experience.

In the 80s and 90s, it was the approach of user-centered design that placed a strong emphasis on understanding user needs and incorporating user feedback into the entire design process. As this gained traction, designers recognized that aesthetics also played a crucial role in attracting users, establishing emotional connections, and influencing user satisfaction and engagement.

Further on, during the rise of digital interfaces, such as websites and mobile apps, aesthetics became increasingly important in creating visually pleasing and engaging experiences. As users interacted with these digital interfaces, aesthetics began to be recognized as a significant factor in shaping perceptions of usability, credibility, and overall user satisfaction.

More recently, as UX has evolved as a multidisciplinary field, drawing insights from psychology, information architecture, visual communication, and other disciplines, designers started to explore the impact of different kinds of design elements on user experiences. It was then that aesthetics started to gain even greater recognition as a critical component for creating memorable, delightful, user-centered experiences.

Today, it is widely acknowledged that aesthetics is an essential aspect of creating engaging, intuitive, and emotionally resonant digital experiences. Designers consciously consider visual design, typography, color schemes, layout, and other aesthetic elements to enhance usability, evoke positive emotions, and ensure the overall aesthetic appeal of the product or service.

However, now that we are potentially moving towards a more generative future where UI is not simply designed, but instead architected to be composed by AI, the role of design is bound for a significant transformation.

Looking ahead in the face of the innovation we are witnessing, my hypothesis is that, more than ever before, designers must go beyond functional aspects and create experiences that are also emotionally resonant, visually captivating, and deeply meaningful. But it is also clear that achieving meaningfulness via aesthetics at the individual level will require some ingenuity.

This is a topic I have touched on before through the lens of generative AI in branding . But what about in UX? Are these topics you discuss with your teams? With the flexibility and modularity of composable experiences, we open the door for unparallel personalization. How will you adapt do this new way of designing?

Thank you for reading! Please chime in with your thoughts. ????

Images made with ?? Midjourney.