One of the easiest ways to add joy or delight to a product is to add visual interest in the form of images or illustrations. There are several considerations to take in mind before adding a suite of images to a product.
Basic human understanding
How and why does an image carry meaning? Does a person’s understanding of what an image means change over time? These are questions that psychologists have explored for over a century.
The psychologist Piaget coined the term schema in 1923—
According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge are based.
A child’s basic mental structure, or cognitive model, according to Piaget, is comprised of schemas, which together build a model of their understanding of the world.
A scenario that is commonly used to describe a schema is a child who has an existing schema of a dog — that it is a furry thing that walks on four legs and has a tail. The child goes to the zoo and sees a tiger for the first time. They think the tiger is a dog because they have yet to learn how a tiger is different, and in doing so will form a schema for a tiger.
The viral “Look at all these chickens!” clip from Vine (R.I.P.) is a perfect real life example of a child with limited schemas. The child shown refers to a flock of geese as “chickens” because they have not yet formed a schema for a goose.
So, if you are designing for a certain demographic, you should consider how advanced their cognitive model will be when using the product and use that to inform design decisions made about what imagery to include in any illustrations.
Getting Even More Basic
Are there images that have innately good connotations? How simple can an image be before it loses all meaning? What about abstract shapes? Do the simplest of shapes have any inherent meaning? According to numerous studies there is a correlation between how pointy a shape is and the impact on how a person processes subsequent stimuli.
In plain English, when a person is shown an image of a triangle (subliminally, quickly enough to barely be perceptible) and then shown an image of a human face, they are more likely to describe that face as less friendly than if they were subliminally shown a circle.
What is interesting about these findings is that they have been reproduced across cultures. The study linked above was done at Capital Normal University, Beijing, China. Other studies, such as this one performed in Europe, have produced similar results that suggest that humans do perceive basic shapes to convey meaning that is often linked to emotional response.
The link between pointy/sharp objects and negative emotions has been explored to signal danger, both now and in the future. Warning signs, contained within triangles, are currently used to designate danger all over the world. The use of sharp objects has been explored to signal danger to humans thousands of years into the future.
So, for the purposes of adding joy or delight to a user experience, it seems best to utilize round shapes within an illustration. Conversely, if a user needs to be warned about something, sharp and pointy shapes are a good way to get that message across.
When to Use Illustrations
One of the key things to consider when using illustrations to enhance UX is the context —
- Where is the user at within the application, or workflow?
- What, at any given time, are the user’s key goals?
- Are there potential points of frustration within a workflow that a user may encounter? Where or when would those most likely happen?
These considerations will help you determine at what places in the user experience you may be able to add an illustration to either enhance the experience, or make it a bit more bearable for (god forbid) frustrated end users.
What Illustration Elements to Include and Avoid
Are there illustration elements that should be avoided in a user experience? This is a question that is worth consideration in the current digital era of memes and subreddits — when images that once brought mellow feelings have lost their original meaning, over time and through appropriation.
Any image that has reached a saturation point in popular culture should probably be avoided, even if stylized or altered, due to the number of different meanings it could convey depending on a specific user’s worldview and experiences.
Sometimes imagery doesn’t age well.
And that is ok. As with anything in UX, it is important to continue to re-evaluate the effectiveness of aspects of the user experience. The maxim, “when in doubt, test it” can apply to every detail of a product, including illustration.