Do You Even Design UI?

UI is such jargon, oh my goodness.

I feel like a robot saying it:

“Beep, boop, beep, bop, the UI is fully designed.”

Let’s try something a bit more poetic, shall we…?

The connection between you and the digital powers you hope to enact…

The means to “compute power”… like the worm to “desert power”.

It’s the marks and minutiae that make up the metaphors for maneuvering and manipulating a millionfold mind-hive.

It’s a cursor and keyboard. It’s a screen and a sound effect. It’s the pixels and points and pinpricks of light that pulsate and proffer and persuade.

A nose and eyes and face and mouth help you identify the person, but the words they speak help you understand the person. And the things they do, that helps you most of all.

And a user inter-face is the eyes and ears and mouth and nose. And it’s the words. It’s the barrier between you and the thing you’re hoping to interact with, to engage with, to make sense of, and to enact for your benefit.

The thing on the other side of the interface is often quite opaque. But something is there. Something is exerting its influence on you. Something is calling out, sharing its ideas, perspectives, and grammars. It’s guiding you, gazing at you, gaslighting you, guessing at you, growing on you…

And the interface is the the thin space between you and it.

When done well, you’ll likely only momentarily notice the interface. It’s designed to get you to the thing on the inside. A face might draw you in or repulse you, but it’s really not a full reflection of what’s on the inside.

Glitz and glam don’t matter. What’s inside, how it makes you feel when you interact with it – that’s what matters.

So, interface designers are often occupied with the beautiful, but the beautiful which is not merely the aesthetic. Rather, they care about the fitness, the coherence of the whole. They feel that a beautiful interface is one that shines from the inside-out, that the surface should reflect the underlying reality.

And they’re concerned with the good – is the interface in question causing harm? Or is it ennobling?

And they’re concerned with the true – is the interface sound? Does it ring true? Will it hold true even when faced with the multitude of diverse humans who will end up coming up to it? Is it a farce? A sham? Pure codswallop? Does it pretend? Does it deceive? Or is it transparent and honest?

So… do you even design UI?