Discuss: The Elegance of Imperfection
by David Sherwin
- Editorial Comments
2 Surprising Beauty
Love this. Reinforces something I’d realized a long time ago in practice and have tried to apply whenever suitable situations show themselves: do something unexpected, including to yourself. I think many actors know to do this when appropriate. I’m not totally sold on “asymmetrical,” these things have to suit the situation. I am sure, however, that you don’t mean ‘do something unsuitable,’ just unexpected, or surprising… can we still say ‘fresh’? Great… thank you so much!
posted at 01:28 pm on March 24, 2009 by uxdesign com
3 Truly inspiring article
I recently came to similar conclusion asymmetrical is beautiful .
posted at 01:35 pm on March 24, 2009 by Vladimir Carrer
4 Imperfection makes the user think
I agree with the approach exposed in this article. And I would to add that the imperfection inside a perfect design push the user to think and not to lay down on the layout.
posted at 04:46 pm on March 24, 2009 by Daniela Panfili
5 Arigatou gozaimasu
Brilliant article. I have often tried to incorporate these attributes into my own design work, but often fail due to a client’s misconceptions regarding “pixel perfection” — even though that term in and of itself is a misnomer (pixels aren’t really perfect). Hopefully this article will help to educate people on this subject and bring a little asymmetry to modern web design.
Domo arigatou gozaimasu!
posted at 04:53 pm on March 24, 2009 by William Dodson
6 Reality
It’s also about living happily with the fact that nothing you do will ever be perfect. Every website I’ve ever created has next steps toward perfection, but they’re mostly just fine as they are, as well. That’s a good feeling.
posted at 05:37 pm on March 24, 2009 by Matt C
7 Zen
This is exactly the kind of article I love the most from AlistApart. I’ve never heard of wabi-sabi before.
posted at 06:32 pm on March 24, 2009 by zen sand garden
8 What about social networking sites?
Under what category would a social networking site fall under, such as Facebook or MySpace, which is dependent on random content posted by users. This content usually goes against the design wishes of the designer of the web application itself, which gives one an unpredictable web environment decided on by its users.
Would these kind of sites fall under the ‘petri dish’ model or some new category called, say, ‘cess pool’?
posted at 06:41 pm on March 24, 2009 by Daniel Swartz
9
@*uxdesign* I understand what you mean when you said, “I’m not totally sold on “asymmetrical,â€? these things have to suit the situation.”
Perhaps a better way to look at asymmetry is to view it in a non-dualistic way. By that, I mean that symmetry and asymmetry are ideals, not fixed points that you can achieve with 110% certainty and aspire towards. It’s likely that every layout you create will land somewhere on the continuum between the two.
Seeing asymmetry in this manner may open up some possibilities that may have seemed unavailable to you when working on a layout that felt balanced but dull, and lacking some sort of spark. Somewhere in the space between the two ideals is the right solution, and the final result may not require the label “asymmetric.”
@*Matt C* – I agree with you, it’s good to aspire towards a great result, but it isn’t perfection you’re striving towards. This is often where we see great print designers flame out when they enter into doing some form of complex interaction design.
@*Daniel* The vast majority of social networking sites fall squarely within the Page model if you’re talking about user interface design. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace are all like bulletin boards with notes and type shifting around in a 2D plane. What’s interesting about Facebook is that through their inclusion of user-created applications, you can bring in experiences that conform to the Garden and Petri Dish models. This creates a greater variety of ways that you can interact with the Facebook website as a whole, which leads to the ‘cess pool’ effect that you’d mentioned.
Perhaps a way to think of Facebook or MySpace in that ‘cess pool’ sense is to consider how their sites have been architected systemically. Instead of shaping a world of content that is designed to present a controlled experience, they have ceded control of content and simply created tools for users to come in build their own bulletin boards. It’s fancier than a high school yearbook, but still a poor substitute for a dinner party.
posted at 12:53 am on March 25, 2009 by David Sherwin
10 Asymmetry is not imperfect at all
I don’t agree saying asymmetry is imperfection.
Perfect symmetry is simply boring; is the simplest way to find “balance”.
If you look at fine art, especially paintings you’ll not find a symmetrical artwork.
The balance is the key word. And nature is balanced. Or, better: nature seems to us to be balanced, or Wabi-Sabi if you want, as we are used to perceive it from our birth. Is the start-point of our visual perception system.
I don’t disagree with this article in general, but I feel the topic to be much more complex
posted at 07:01 am on March 25, 2009 by Jan Tonellato
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1 Beauty by imperfection
Many years ago, i learned a Japanese word, something like shobuye. It represented a japanese concept that beauty was enhanced by a slight imperfection. Too bad that English or French do not have a similar word. Maybe our world would be different.
posted at 12:05 pm on March 24, 2009 by Marc Poulin