The Mighty Pixel is Not Sacred by Bryan
May 15, 2010 in Interaction Design with 6 Comments
It's time designers stopped thinking of their work as pixels on a web page. Unlike tangible products, pixels aren't permanent and can change quickly -- but that's okay. Think of it as an opportunity to solidify the relationships of the people you design for.
Consider Facebook: it's content and user-base continue to grow, despite numerous design changes. Because the design encourages users to build something great, the site's pixels continue to be overwritten, but it's message remains the same.
Designers should use their work to build relationships with companies, coworkers, customers, organizations, etc. That way, when the pixels are gone, the relationships still remain strong.
6 Comments
Jonathan Boutelle says:
Your point isn't sinking into my brain somehow. Is it basically that interaction design and thinking about human motivations are more important than aesthetics?
If so I agree ... the "Make it pretty" is a really small part of a good designers job. And many grand-slam success websites aren't pretty at all (think ebay, myspace, craigslist).
Bryan (ZURB) says:
Jonathan- I started learning to design with pixels on an Apple IIGS and have fond memories of slaving over each pixel to create the "illusion" of an image. It was magical. I'd spend hours late into the night trying to get each pixel right. I was stuck with a canvas of 640x480 pixels and one undo.
In someways, those limitations pushed me to understand the medium and forced me to learn how to use a computer.
Twenty-five years later I still have that love. But getting pixels "right" is less about fooling my eye into the desired visual effect, and more about creating a path for a person to discover something. And most of the time that takes many iterations before it's right. Not because we're trying to create a desired effect, but because we've learn something from the people using those pixels. The pixels are disposable.
The pixels become an artifact of the relationship we build with the people we design for.
Jonathan (ZURB) says:
I think my first epiphany with pixels was using MacDraw and learning that the pixels on the screen weren't the real thing - they were vector objects, so they printed smooth! At the time it was quite a shock (I was pretty young).
I still love pixels, when I can wrangle them into a pixelated representation of what I want, but they're certainly not everything. Design online is transient and rightly so - the faster we can change the pixels, the faster we get to the ideal experience.
Matt (ZURB) says:
The parallel in the software engineering world is bits.
When I was learning assembly language it was all about the bits. Adding bits, shifting bits, using less bits. Bits were the building blocks for everything else and that made them magical.
However bit worship is a false path. And a master of bits becomes their slave if he is not putting those bits to a worthy purpose. One day I had an epiphany, the bits were a means to an end, and they needed to be put in their place.
I still make awesome bits, but I make damn sure those bits serve at the pleasure of great design.
Dave (ZURB) says:
Pixels are a lot like the Legos that used to scatter my bedroom floor; they are the building blocks for a vision. Pixel, like Legos, should be treated as a medium for the expression of something greater. Pixels are a medium to communicate with your audience and develop a relationship, so keeping that greater objective central to design is essential.
Jeremy (ZURB) says:
Like Bryan I remember drawing on the computer with my ancient Commodore and Apple boxes. I kept it up into my first stint with PC, but really connected with my PowerMac 8500 in college using Paint and Photoshop.
My love affair with the pixel was in translating painterly images into forms on screen in image galleries and hypercard-style flows. I quickly shifted thinking from series of beautiful images into interactions and complex logic.
At the time I attended UCSC's art department there was a spirit of experimentation. We used Macromedia Director to create interactive "movies," we exployed MUDs and MOOs with VRML to form more complex interactive spaces with basic artificial intelligence, and we employed electronics like pagers and photo-sensors to provide ways for people to interact with computers beyond a keyboard and mouse. Good times.
The big thing for me was the shift from beautiful pixels (masterpiece) to the ways you could get people to interact with and find meaning in what you'd built. It's become a lifelong passion.
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