pretty important

May 18, 2009, 7:35 am
Filed under: Digital Strategy

In Defense of Eye Candy by Stephen P. Anderson looks at trends in neuroscience pointing out that how we “think” cannot be separated from how we “feel,” and applies that to web design.

Love these quotes :

“…emotion is not a luxury: it is an expression of basic mechanisms of life regulation developed in evolution, and is indispensable for survival. It plays a critical role in virtually all aspects of learning, reasoning, and creativity. Somewhat surprisingly, it may play a role in the construction of consciousness.”—António Damásio, Emotion and Feelings: A Neurobiological Perspective

In the early 1900s, “form follows function” became the mantra of modern architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright changed this phrase to “form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union,” using nature as the best example of this integration.

The more we learn about people, and how our brains process information, the more we learn the truth of that phrase: form and function aren’t separate items. If we believe that style somehow exists independantly of functionality, that we can treat aesthetics and function as two separate pieces, then we ignore the evidence that beauty is much more than decoration.