Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Ahmed Hassan (Simaar)

A case against symmetry in design

We are humans and no matter how many times we try to put ourselves into little boxes it won’t ever work, be it 16 personalities or OCEAN in psychology, flat vs skeumorphism, or a portion of your target demographic that doesn’t quite behave like you expect it to. We hate boxes inherently, as much as mathematical they are, they denote a symmetry that we can’t ever relate to. We like imperfections as much as we pretend to shy away from them.

We are odd, curvy and emotional beings and finally design has caught up. Grid and Layouts are essential, that I agree, but to say that we will perfectly relate to them in an emotional way is well, wrong. There is one thing that needs clarification up till this point. We, as designers, have liked grids and structures not so much because they are beautiful but due to their natural ability to simplify and connect.

Think of it as any product you love. The new Tesla model is beautiful and most will agree but would you find the ugly, functional thing that created it? Would you be fascinated by it?

Are you fascinated by those red robots more than the Tesla car they are making?

No. Its hard to connect to those tools until you use them on daily basis and have grown to like them. Grids are similar to that for designers: a tool that is so useful that we might get a bit overwhelmed and think that the general audience will have the same relation with them but we need to take a retake on our take over this. Why Apple added genie effect, why Microsoft brought back translucency in Fluent Design or Facebook wishing you Good afternoon? Mere usability and aesthetics aren’t the reasons. More then setting the right contexts, they connect with our brain’s irresistible need to look for excitement and wonder. We love surprises, out of the logic scenarios appearing in uncommon places in our routines in order to delight us.

Our tools like gird and formal language might provide clarity and convenience but its difficult to form an emotional connection with their symmetry. That is why illustration-accompanying-paragraphs are easier to understand. Its the reason why pictures increase the interest of the user. Its the reason for existence of comedy. We do love ab$urd.

And we reveal it everywhere, be it the Coffeepot for Masochists or Brutalist websites or Philippe Starck’s juicer or the green colored “L” in Google’s logo or Apple’s 1984 commercial or even our own thinking processes.

We will fight symmetry in the shadow of our souls and be loved for it irrespective of the fact that they make us maintain the world as it is.

Chaos is the enemy we secretly love and imperfection its father and that is where relationships come in. Our different imperfections cause the friction, this friction ignites the spark, and that spark create the magic. When our incoherently spaced dots meet the dots of someone else. New connections are formed, as the connectivity grows this network give birth to a relationship. As designers we need to understand these relation in context of product and the user. These relations need to be formed not just with usability and aesthetics in mind but also human love for humor and creativity.

As creators we need to understand the inherent disrespect humans have for consistency and monotonous.

This calls for designs that break symmetry intelligently and respectfully. That certainly follow a proper structure for good usability but also add a little magic. Just enough to make it worth user’s time. No matter how formal and structured we have to be, there is almost always room for a bit of creativity, humor and controlled chaos.

Take google.com for example, the search giant has to do 3.5 billion searches per day for the whole world. Every kilobyte of code on that page has its price and so much so that it took this factor into the redesigning the logo too. It took its logo from 6kb to 305 bytes. But it still finds room to show those cool doodles. It still celebrates humans in its own googly way!

In this age of design systems, remember that our products and brands need to have spark, a creative chaos, thoughtful & intentional asymmetry so they can resonate with who we are.

This topic definitely needs a disclaimer and here it is. The design is always concerned with a specific purpose:

Communicating a specific idea, emotion, information to a specific audience in a specific medium in an efficient and effective way.

The is the primary motive of design and although I have argued about the importance of chaos, it is not something to be played with. Asymmetry if not used with care, can prevent the proper usage of the product.

Usability and efficiency are far more important factors and the need of asymmetry takes the second place. Our products and brands can form personal connections with users only after they work how they are supposed to!

But afterwards, don’t fear to let some wrinkles of imperfection, stains of asymmetry and a pint of carefree humor shine through!

Let the lines be blurred and rules bent (responsibly)!

Ahmed aka Simaar is a Brand/UI/UX designer who is practicing to develop and improve experiences of brands and interfaces. See his work here: www.simaar.com

A case against symmetrical design was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A case against symmetrical design

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