Naturalist Design Manifesto
Tags: design, naturalworld, uiux
Published: 2021-04-02 15:07:02

In a world of arbitrary design decisions it's time to refocus and embrace the natural world. This is a manifesto about the direction in which the aesthetics and design systems of UI/UX in every day devices of the future should go. The intention here is to create a world that is complementary to our human presence and not disconnected from it.


INTRO

Using your phone should blend seamlessly with everything else you do during the day. It shouldn't be an interruption luring you into a dance, it should be a part of the dance you're already in.

The design language and user experience of our devices should be an extension of our living space, its experience shouldn't revolve around creating a separated "designed space", it should be about adapting to its surroundings. One goal of this manifesto is to highlight the urgency for an extropic appreciation of aesthetics in a technologically enhanced world.¹

If I'm on a hike at the Appalachians with a tablet in my hand it should be a part of the natural sanctuary I'm in. There shouldn't be any tension or clash. The future will be a graceful remediation through a harmonious symbiosis of two worlds we're in: mechanical and natural. The crossing of human and machine is here and there is no separation unless our design intentions allow it to be.

There's still a stark contrast in mobile design in general that assumes the role of a device must carry a design language different than its immediate physical surroundings. User interfaces are "expected" to be on a symmetrical grid, for example. This isn't to say we shouldn't have order or structure, in fact it would be naive to say that anything exists without it to some degree.

This is a manifesto about defying technology as an abrasive, rigid, cold and mechanical piece of equipment detached from a natural world. It should be reimagined within a cozy simulacrum of a discreet naturalism², an anthropomorphic foundation, a natural interface immersion, and an awareness to endogenous circadian rhythms. Less is more, however minimalism can be uncomfortable and stiff - it is odd that we were ever okay with having to click small 5 by 5 pixel areas on the corners of a screen to navigate between windows, for example. There is an inherent frustration within the user experience flow of most operating systems that we've grown to accept. Design should complement the rhythm of our natural environment rather than break it. Its breath and pulse should parallel the end user. This can be done by touch, speech, gestures, handwriting, vision, and so on.


NATURAL DESIGN LANGUAGES

This is not about conforming to natural elements but rather acknowledging it as a foundation to life. As we use objects like phones every day, they are essentially another limb. And if one was to design a body part it would have to revolve around the design system of the body. One can design an entire species of animals that do not exist on Earth, however the animals would have underlying systems in order to create them.

Every sound, every UI decision, every motion, every aspect of its art and design direction should be as nuanced as the aura around candle light, the fluttering of a small moth, or the gentle glow of lit ember. We no longer need to follow a jolting binary "on and off" design language - we can now create clean microinteractions of a window appearing and disappearing that mimic natural motions, so rather than something disappearing immediately, it can transition out of the surface with a subtle flutter. This would be a more natural motion to the eye.

Pixels, phosphenes, and stars. Everything we look at must be true to its environment, both in how it lives in a space and how it is portrayed. The screen can resemble stone or earthenware materials. Anything on its surface should embrace hyperrealist skeumorphist visual cues that acknowledge all of the 5 elements. This includes adjusting to light sources and temperatures. Reflections of light occur in relation to its source, it's never flat or arbitrary, and this can be interpreted similarly with reflections on the surface of obsidian, for example. Light and shadows pour and leak around other elements, as well. Colors should be embraced truly from environments such as the Redwood forest or of coral reefs. Gleaming bioluminescence of deep sea creatures can also be of use. The indication of wind. The chemical processes such as: expansion and contraction, sorption, forming humidity and evaporation, and the harnessing and releasing of energy. The visual representation of the passing of time, like patinas. Textures should also be intricate and precise as follicles and subtle vellus.

Google's entire Material Design direction was inspired by paper and ink.³ Although the look and feel can still be resurfaced because it is usually mistranslated in appearing too artificial.


FAMILIARITY

GUIs are less about graphics and more about creating a familiarity. However, this familiarity should be treated with careful consideration in how often we view it.⁴ What a lot of people don't realize is that the decisions that designers make when designing gigantic social media interfaces, for example, is that the repetition in daily usage of UI can literally imprint into your behavior - similar to the memory of navigating through a home you've lived in for extended periods of time.

Other than the importance of choices in handling navigation design problems, one can begin with a central design motif narrative of delicate warmth and an amorphous sprouting onto the surface of the screen rather than jolting the viewer with cold and abrupt movements. The microinteraction that occurs when a window collapses can relay vitalic information. It can be animated in a way that informs a reaction of whatever content vanished. Another way to look at it: the way a LED light blinks, whether it’s a “pulse”, or mimicking breathing, can also relay dramatic information.

Breaking the repetition of the same tasks we do every day is another way to create an organic experience. If we go through the same pattern of actions every day it begins to feel monotonous. In reality there can never be the same exact experience twice, we can have similar experiences, but it's never exactly the same. This idea can be adopted onto a screen with animated variations in how we interpret the design of our GUIs.

Materials frequently held in your hand shouldn't feel like a prosthesis rejection. The experience of scrolling on a small surface isn’t natural to our eye. It causes an awkward anticipation and a digital eye strain. Incorporating a subtle physics engine was an effort to make a natural simulation, however it still appears elementary. There must be careful research into these animations especially when the potential for motion is ready within a high resolution display.

Perhaps rather than using fingers to constantly swipe, how about gently tilting the device to suggest the motion of scrolling? The scroll, as it stands now, is also limiting our scope in how we navigate. It’s either up or down. What is shown on the screen at the present moment can also dictate what is shown subsequently without any input. It does not have to be within a linear direction, it can transition within the frame. Scrolling can go “through”, it can go horizontal, it can bend, and so on. The method in which we scroll can also change, for example, we can create motions that dictate how we navigate from location to location. The idea of an alternate scrolling mechanism has been challenged by many experimental designers.

If I gently tilt my phone I would expect the scrolling to begin a roll. If I tickle the surface of a message I would also expect a corresponding motion on whoever receives it. If I draw a small heart on the screen I imagine it sending a like. If I am chatting with someone I can let them know I'm listening, or nodding.When reacting to a message it can tell a story, rather than a static and reduced reaction. I include this as emphasis in rethinking what we have decided as to be the best and only solution.

A "BEST" SOLUTION

There is an assumption that the infrastructure design of today is “final” and “correct” simply because it has become normalized in its widespread use. For example, a traffic light uses three light bulbs for a set of three colors, when it really needs only one light bulb to accomplish this. Even if you were color blind you wouldn't need three bulbs.

This manifesto applied to the traffic light would suggest the following:
∙ The traffic light is a part of the environment, not an implant onto the environment.
∙ The traffic light makes gentle swift transitions from one color to the next, a fade similar to incandescence, rather than a binary "on and off".
∙ The traffic light is considerate of the environment by not being wasteful and using as few materials possible to produce.⁵
∙ The traffic light is synthetic but rests within the language of worldly materials and design systems.


ENVIRONMENTS ARE NO LONGER OFFLINE

Natural implies an environment in harmony and flow. Objects no longer exist in a stasis - there are constellations of information that revolve around them. For example, when browsing a grocery store one can Google multitudes of information regarding an item. Where it comes from, who its associations are, health ratings, what the community has responded to, what its environmental consequences are, industry comparisons, and so on. Why is the physical grocery store still offline? I believe it's because we don't incentivize design that provides an optimal living space. One might say it's too tedious to have to search for it on your own. This isn't a willpower problem, this is a design problem.

iPhones have access to tons of information within its relationship to the human using it. They are full of sensors. A proximity sensor, an ambient light sensor, an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a gyroscopic sensor. With two cameras front and back it can literally see what its surroundings look like. Phones also use location information for further clues on how to be more true to its surroundings. As of now, we're seeing the data that we input being measurements for advertising, rather than creating a genuine human connection. For example, a phone could potentially measure your real-time reaction to what is seen on your screen and then more accurately decipher how to relay whatever you were interacting with to others. These reactions could also give hints as to what your aggregate feed follows after the user's reaction.

To further the point of immersion into environments, there was no excuse to not use readily available technology to aid our living spaces during the pandemic. Considering how accurate and vast our data reach is we could have used geolocation on our devices to send notifications about places we go to that are at high risk. Alarms when visiting locations that are traced as positive.⁶ Why did it take Apple 8 months after announcing a countrywide lockdown to implement this? Locations now contain archives of information that hold potential to be an extension of our reality.

Despite the availability of most technologies it seems as though we still don't use it to our advantage yet. We don't use information to create the potential for "online collective environments" that can greatly benefit us, but rather to create an environment that revolves around individualism. Incentives are geared towards creating superficial spaces filled with micro-expressions that are nowhere near the gestures of human beings in person. This abbreviation of human interactions may still be in its infancy but its trajectory should shift to building who you are versus showing who you are.


A NATURAL FUTURE

So, what would a phone in the next 40 years look like? I would hope to see it being less about separating into a virtual space and more of returning to embrace the natural environment around you. This idea has led to a “Chameleon UI/UX”, where a device interacts and adapts with the immediate environment through colors, light, textures, and other data sourced from your exact location. Your phone would replicate characteristics of where you are so that your phone feels a part of where you are.

This is all emboldened by aspects of Speculative Design, as declared by Dunne & Raby: "Design speculations can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality", with an aim of sparking discourse, "to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life," and, "to better understand the present and to discuss the kind of future people want,".⁷

As stated by Nicolas Bourriaud, "The artistic question is no longer: 'what can we make that is new?' but, 'how can we make do with what we have?'", encouraging the phrase, "‘make do and mend’ ... In other words, how can we produce singularity and meaning from this chaotic mass of objects, names, and references that constitutes our daily life?".⁸

This is a call for reapproaching design thinking. This is a call away from the romanticizing of "futuristic tech design" or the ever popular "flat design" aesthetics. This is a call for a refashioning of a medium that holds media. This is a call for an awareness against design nihilism that is incongruent with our physical reality, the natural world, and the languages of our human senses. People want what is bad for them, however, we don't need to design UI/UX that is bad for anyone.⁹ We see petty attempts of design naturalism that simply aren't sufficient, all the time. When it comes to our biology, our mental wellbeing, and our living spaces, we cannot afford to design without this intention. If billions of people were to look at one thing all the time it should lie within the environment, not clash with it.

Listen to this manifesto as a recording here.

Special thank you goes to designer and educator Yotam Hadar.


¹ Refer to the Extropic Arts Manifesto
² Naturalism as defined by Charles Albert Dubray
³ Source: 99designs.com/blog/trends/skeuomorphism-flat-design-material-design
⁴ A response to Don Norman’s Principles of Interaction Design
⁵ One of Dieter Ram's design principles: Good design is environmentally friendly
⁶ This was written before Apple started its "Exposure Notifications"
⁷ From Dunne & Raby's Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming
⁸ From Nicolas Bourriaud's Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World
⁹ A response from a conversation I had with Sterling Crispin, a researcher at Apple