Reading Response: Designing to Reduce Barriers to the Human Experience

From this week's reading, I'd like to respond to Artful Design Principle 2.7, which states:

Ge uses the example of auto-tune as a design that, by mechanizing our voices, gives people permission to express themselves!

Before looking at inhibition, I want to take a step back to a more traditional design principle—accessibility—particularly in the UI/UX (user interface/user experience) space. There are many examples of great accessible software out there. Figma, a design tool, provides an intuitive and satisfying drag-and-drop interface that makes creating aesthetically pleasing designs easy. Google Docs, with which this article was originally written, drastically lowers the requisite skill-level for creating a colorful, well-formatted document (compared to say, HTML or Notepad).

Figure 1. The Google Doc version of this article!

In my experience, a large part of UI/UX is making the interfaces intuitive and accessible so that users are not frustrated when using your product. Easily visible search/help bars, and conformation to conventional ordering of menu options (e.g. “File, Edit, View…”) are design decisions that ease the user experience.

Ge urges us to take design one step further.

While accessibility reduces barriers to tools, design can reduce barriers to the human experience.

Let's take a few examples of designs that reduce inhibition.

A karaoke room! What more fun is singing on a karaoke machine where no one can hear you but you and your (possibly) drunk friends? The sound-proof room, alcohol and snacks, and dim lighting all contribute to a space dedicated to self-expression. No matter how bad of a singer you are, you can be pulled out of your cocoon to sing a few songs!

For that matter... the car karaoke and shower karaoke are all cultural phenomena that inadvertently designed spaces that bring us the same joy and comfort of singing in private or in company.

For some, a messy art or work environment might be something that brings out the creativity within us. The randomly strewn objects may bring out inspiration, or the existing mess may be comforting, inviting us to fill the room with more creations, beautiful or not. Either way, messiness is a common feature in many artistic spaces: rooms filled with unfinished, work-in-progress paintings and pieces as the artists jump between their numerous projects. The lack of commitment to any one project can reduce inhibition and creative blocks and keep art playful!

In the world I want to live in, people sing and dance simply because they feel like it, form spontaneous friendships with strangers instead of retreating to our phones, and listen with the intention of understanding rather than responding.

Every design and social interaction is a vote for the world we want to see, and I believe that with every stranger that I befriend on the streets and every random dance move that I whip out for the spontaneous fun of it, I bring our world just a bit closer to this idyllic reality.