Which do you prefer, effective or beautiful design?

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By Irene Eijs, director Data Strategy & Analytics A bit of a stupid question of course. Because you want both! Fortunately, it turns out that what we – in general – find beautiful is often effective. The golden rule: respond to unconscious human behavior.
People filter out 95% of what they see in a day

The golden rule: respond to unconscious human behavior. 

And you can do that on 3 levels. 

  1. Play on our primal instinct. Evolution makes us unconsciously look first at movement, contrasting colours and faces. After all, they can all be an indication of imminent danger.
  2. Unconscious filtering behaviour. People filter out 95% of what they see in a day, because consciously looking at everything takes too much energy.We therefore only see things that seem relevant to us from experience. For example: things that other people look at (that’s why the direction of someone’s glance in a photo is important), but also well-known logos or the colours of your favorite football club.
  3. Learned viewing behavior. We scan expressions from top left to bottom right because that’s how we read. And we start with the largest letters, because a title usually says what it is all But this rule is overruled by the first two points.

And: a face in the middle of the page is viewed first, and can cause important text at the top to be missed. 

With this in mind, you can ensure that the most important elements of your message are at least seen!