Embracing Asymmetrical Design An Article by Ben Nadel www.bennadel.com Humans love symmetry. We find symmetry to be very attractive. Our brains may even be hard-wired through evolution to process symmetrical data more efficiently. So, it's no surprise that, as designers, we try to build symmetry into our product interfaces and layouts. It makes them feel very pleasant to look at. Unfortunately, data is not symmetrical…Once you release a product into "the real world", and users start to enter "real world data" into it, you immediately see that asymmetrical data, shoe-horned into a symmetrical design, can start to look terrible. To fix this, we need to lean into an asymmetric reality. We need to embrace the fact that data is asymmetric and we need to design user interfaces that can expand and contract to work with the asymmetry, not against it. To borrow from Bruce Lee, we need to build user interfaces that act more like water: “You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” — Bruce Lee The pernicious issue with pangramsChanging Our Development Mindset datainterfaces
Primer A Film by Shane Carruth www.imdb.com A normal wooden pencilSomething moreAt the top of the pageParanoiaHe had but to speak+1 More timetechnologyexperiments
A normal wooden pencil Aaron: You know that story about how NASA spent millions of dollars developing this pen that writes in Zero G? And how Russia solved the problem? Abe: Yeah, they used a pencil. problemscreativityconstraintscosmos
At the top of the page Here's what's going to happen. I'm gonna read this, and you're gonna listen, and you're gonna stay on the line. And you're not gonna interrupt, and you're not gonna speak for any reason. Some of this you know. I'm gonna start at the top of the page.
He had but to speak He had but to speak aloud the words that came into his head, and those around him would fall in line. wordscommunicationpersuasion
Like normal people Abe: What's wrong with our hands? Aaron: What do you mean? Abe: Why can't we write like normal people? Aaron: I don't know...I can see the letters. I know what they should look like, I just can't get my hand to make them. writing