Posted on Tuesday 13 December 2005 - Popularity: unranked
“Less Is Not Only More, Its Actually Better”. A thoughtful article on why open space can lead to better usability and more compelling designs.
As information and interaction designers, we are armed with a toolset that can help users understand the information before them. The more complex the set of information, the more work we have to do. Without much thinking, designers provide visual cues of what is related to what by a process I like to call delineation. We box things. We color things. We title things. Through delineation, we can deliver information with less noise.
One of the most powerful means of delineation is the use of open, empty space. By pushing less semantically-relevant information away we reduce the potential for cognitive load that can arise when less relevant information is placed too close together. In other words, we’re handing the user a greater level of context to work within.
Give’em room folks, especially around the important areas of your sites content. Of course the same concept can be applied to application user interfaces (GUI) as well.
