Form as a Language
There’s a great post over at Core77 on the language of form that exists in product design:
Form has meaning; it can touch us at such a primal level that our mind is left scrambling to rationalize our emotional reactions. Consider the visceral impression conveyed by a natural setting: The deep serenity felt, for example, while walking through a majestic grove of redwoods. The delicate lace of fern fronds wave as you drag your hand through them as you walk, and your heart jumps into your throat when startled by a deer caught wondering across the trail. These natural forms hold an innate meaning that not only transcends the human experience, but even predates our verbal expression, definition, and measurement. In other words, we did not create this meaning; it comes from the forms themselves, and existed long before we did.“
The idea that form is a language that predates verbal expression is fascinating to me. It feels like there’s a convergence between this idea and a notion mentioned by Eames Demetrios at Compostmodern a few weeks ago that he described as “way it should be-ness”. The post also eloquently describes a dilemma I’ve been running into lately – my job as a producer at Zynga is extremely data-intensive, but the problems I’m most interested in solving are in the areas of experience and form. In a business driven by statistics like clicks, installs and daily active users, I’m finding it difficult to justify time spent focusing on the less easily quantifable aspects of designing intuitive and visceraly attractive products. Not only that, but when we do put the time into refining these aspects of the design, as I feel we did with Scramble Live, it’s challenging to measure the impact of that attention to detail.
