Does good design require instructions?

As a UX designer responsible for creating digital products and interfaces, I often struggle with the fear that my designs may not be intuitive or accessible enough for all users.

This has always been a conscious thought of mine whenever I design.

Ever since I started my journey in UX, many things in my daily life make me question the design process behind each thing I interact with. The crosswalk buttons, doors, furniture, and utensils. I’m fascinated by the fact that I can intuitively “use” those products just like my instinct to breathe air.

That begs the question. Is it true that “Good Designs Don’t Need Instructions?”

Although the idea that “good designs don’t need instructions” is somewhat of a cliché, it was explicitly mentioned in literature by Don Norman and Dieter Rams in the late 1900s. For the most part, their philosophies are still relevant today even though the products we design nowadays are vastly more intricate.

Don Norman

Donald Arthur Norman is an influential figure in the field of cognitive science, usability engineering, and user-centered design. Born on December 25, 1935, he devoted a significant portion of his career to understanding how people interact with design and how design can be used to make everyday tasks easier. Norman’s book, “The Design of Everyday Things,” is a seminal work in the world of design and is widely read by both design professionals and the general public.

Norman is widely known for introducing the concept of “affordances” in design, a term borrowed from the field of psychology. Affordances refer to the potential actions that a user can perceive as possible with an object or system.

Norman writes,

“Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. Plates are for pushing. Knobs are for turning. Slots are for inserting things into. Balls are for throwing or bouncing. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction is needed.”

This statement encapsulates Norman’s philosophy that well-designed products shouldn’t need instructions. The design itself should guide the user toward the correct usage. For example, a well-designed door handle should indicate whether the door needs to be pushed or pulled without requiring a sign. This is achieved through the use of proper signifiers and taking advantage of the affordances of the design.

Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams, born on May 20, 1932, is a renowned German industrial designer known for his minimalist design philosophy and his influential tenure at Braun, a consumer products company, where he served as the chief design officer from 1961 to 1995. His work at Braun, characterized by its functionalist and user-friendly design, continues to influence modern design, particularly in consumer electronics.

Rams formulated the “Ten Principles of Good Design,” a list that encapsulates his design philosophy. According to Rams, good design is innovative, practical, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough down to the last detail, environmentally friendly, and involves as little design as possible.

The principle that “Good design is understandable” closely aligns with the idea that well-designed products don’t need instructions.

As Rams said,

“Good design is understandable. It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.”

This philosophy suggests that a user should be able to understand how to use a product and what it does just by looking at it, thus minimizing the need for explicit instructions. The design of the product should be clear and intuitive enough that the user can figure out its function and operation naturally.

Context and relevance matter when we apply Don Norman and Dieter Ram’s philosophies to modern 21st-century design.

There are noticeable differences in product design in the 1900s vs now. As with technological advances, there are more “affordances”.

As Don Norman explained, Affordances are the perceived and actual properties of a thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could be used.

In other words, they refer to what an object can do, or what functions or actions it allows or affords the user.

For example: if you look at a coffee mug, its handle affords holding and its hollow design affords to contain liquid. These are not instructions printed on the mug, but we understand these functionalities based on its design and our past experiences.

In the time when both Norman and Rams were actively working, many products were primarily physical, and their design relied heavily on these tangible affordances.

For example, Rams’ work at Braun. The calculators, radios, and kitchen appliances he designed were all physical products with buttons, knobs, and switches that users could directly interact with.

Similarly, Norman’s theories were formulated during an era when personal computing was just starting to emerge. The affordances in these contexts were largely tied to physical objects.

But as we’ve transitioned into the 21st century, the design landscape has significantly changed.

Today, a great deal of our interaction with products and services happens digitally, on websites, mobile applications, and other software platforms. In this new era, designers grapple with designing intuitive interactions for digital affordances.

Digital affordances have evolved beyond physical attributes and constraints. Consider a hyperlink on a webpage. It doesn’t have a physical presence, but it affords us to click because of our learned experiences and established conventions in web design.

Also, a digital button on a touch screen affords to press, not because it’s physically “press-able”, but because its visual design suggests that action.

There are several digital affordances that are designed to replicate real-life actions in order to make the product intuitive.

The philosophy that “good design doesn’t need instructions” still holds relevant in this digital age. Still, how we interpret and apply it has to evolve to consider these digital affordances.

The core principle remains that the design itself should guide the user intuitively to the correct usage, whether it’s a physical object or a digital interface. But the challenges and solutions in achieving this ideal can look quite different in a digital context compared to a physical one.

Especially with the rise of complex technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality, the scope of design has expanded even further, and the challenge of creating intuitive, understandable designs has become even more profound.

At WWDC23, Apple has announced Apple Vision Pro, its first spatial computer that blends digital content with the physical world. This innovative technology creates a three-dimensional user interface controlled by the user’s eyes, hands, and voice, providing a more immersive and intuitive experience.

The affordances of the Apple Vision Pro enable a significant shift in how users interact with digital content. The device’s spatial computing capabilities allow for an immersive blending of digital and physical spaces, offering a rich, layered environment for work or play.

The absence of controllers introduces new interaction paradigms — voice, eye, and hand controls. Users can manipulate digital elements as if they were physical objects, increasing ease of use and natural interaction.

The device’s high-resolution 4K display per eye offers a superior visual experience, making digital content more detailed and engaging. The innovative ‘EyeSight’ feature bridges the gap between the virtual and real worlds, facilitating social interactions.

In addition, the spatial audio system and the possibility of using the device as a personal cinema or computing tool give the users a wealth of multimedia and productivity possibilities, thereby expanding the potential contexts of use.

Although this is a totally new concept, they’ve done very well at showcasing the affordances through a series of real-life applications as shown in their demo videos.

Designers must now consider how to design for actions that don’t have established conventions or obvious physical parallels. That said, modern designers have more strict and demanding criteria than those in the 1900s.

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