Minimalistic Design: Is It That Great?

Such a trend as minimalism is what tends to characterize the last decade. And, it’s not even surprising that it has become that popular. The matter is that people are sick of heavy styling. On the contrary, they want their websites and interfaces to be connected with something clean and simple. By the way, there is one more cool feature of minimalism in web design: it allows to speed up the development process. What is more, minimalistic sites and apps load far quicker.

But minimalism did not appear a few years ago. It was spread for quite a long time. Such companies as Braun and famous architects started to apply it in order to achieve the best results in their works and get extra inspiration.

Here is a curious fact: the introduction of iOS 7 was linked to an intention to avoid the implementation of rich styles and effects. Accordingly, the designers noticed it. The company was striving to suggest something that would reflect the essence and design of the Apple hardware.

When the discussion revolves around minimalism, Apple is going to serve as an example worth looking at. The matter is that their products are characterized by overall simplicity. It means that anyone who deals with them is able to realize how to use them. Taking such steps as removing I/O ports, a headphone jack, and home button are the actions that demonstrate moving towards this goal too. Actually, it is one of Apple’s key principles and thanks to this, they were able to create such cool stuff as the iMac G3.

But if we take a deeper look at Apple’s minimalistic design, we will be able to notice the following points:

• Their aesthetics are introduced in order to make sales more productive;
• There is no individual approach in the design when speaking of Apple’s products;
• The users may not be satisfied with all this at a certain point (the mice and keyboards of Apple are great-looking ones but their ergonomics cannot be called perfect. The matter is that when using this stuff, the hands and wrists have to be put into an unnatural position and this causes a lot of strain). That is why some of the potential users prefer to obtain stuff from Microsoft.

What Else Should Be Considered When Speaking of Minimalism for the Users?

Another example to take a look at is iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen. In this gadget, the paus/prev and next track buttons were taken away. And, what has happened as a result? The users started to lack the simplicity of dealing with the device. The initial purpose of such a change was linked to the intention to introduce a minimalistic design.

But all the examples that can be given certainly do not revolve around Apple. There are quite a few companies of different ranges that stick to an extreme minimalism. The problem is that those who produce various stuff cannot find balance the simplicity for the end user and introduction of the minimalistic design. As a result, the consumers have to face such problems as:

• Bad accessibility;
• A lack of element differentiation;
• Non-productive color schemes;
• Trouble with the navigation at all levels.

It is important to realize that today’s users are not striving to face cool aesthetics only. They desperately want great accessibility and this is what shall be given to them no matter how hard it is to achieve such a goal.

But on the other hand, it is close to impossible to do this as long as minimalistic designs will always be about suggesting aesthetics to people. That is why some architects have called them a dead end.

What shall the designers do in this case? They realize that minimalism looks awesome when done with enough care. But still, it is difficult to decide on what scale such solutions may be represented in digital design.

So, here is a conclusion that can be drawn: minimalism is better to be applied in the visual spheres and not in the stuff where usability is a primary concern. This refers to physical products, websites, and interfaces.