Web3.0 Applications: When Design Style Becomes a Competitive Advantage

Author: EDZ, Rhythm Research Institute

No longer just for warmth, artistic factors such as fashion, aesthetics, trends, and style have taken on greater weight in determining quality.

As we become increasingly reliant on software, its development cycle has entered a mature stage, where functionality is no longer the sole decisive factor; we desire applications that are more "aligned" with ourselves.

UI/UX design has gradually become a top priority for application software, determining the "tone" of an application and automatically filtering user types. When users choose an application that resonates with their own style among many similar-function applications, a small community begins to form, sharing similar "aesthetics" and "sensibilities," belonging to "a certain type of person."

This article is by Molly Mielke, a product designer at the collaborative design software Figma, who provides a detailed analysis of the history and underlying logic of software style design. Rhythm BlockBeats has translated the original text:

In recent years, digital design from tech companies has begun to converge: their designs are somewhat monotonous, quirky, or conservative. From sans-serif fonts to soft color palettes, from rigid white backgrounds to curved shapes and tones of buttons, most modern software has gradually unified into a single style, making it hard to distinguish without close inspection.

In the past, the visual design of software generally reflected the zeitgeist, and this approach has been quite effective for many years. This auto-tuned design made products both cool and easily accepted; youthful yet trustworthy. However, recently, this fashionable design has become dull, as evidenced by the plethora of similar-looking websites.

The blandness and lack of personality in modern software have led users to crave more interesting and thoughtful tools, tools that are more human-like—or even superior, more interesting, and quirkier than us.

With technological advancements, people are not only looking at whether software can solve problems but are also paying more attention to how it expresses personality, much like choosing clothes. This shift in mindset has been quietly happening. In highly personalized areas like note-taking tools and crypto consumer goods, people often choose software based on their identity. I believe that software style design is becoming popular again, and we are witnessing this process: people map their self-awareness onto products, giving life to those pixel files. This shift directly affects the types of users for the products and the formation of related communities.

Form Over Function

Since the early development of the modern computer industry (IBM, HP, and Bell Labs), software developers (who were also software designers at the time) have taken pride in their achievements in software performance rather than appearance. Early computers and software adhered to black, white, and beige tones, with beige reportedly used because it could hide dirt. At least until the 1970s, they were too focused on functionality to pay attention to form, creating a culture that ignored aesthetics. At that time, impractical visual designs and emotional appeals were often deemed useless, and the bandwidth of computers at the time did not support these appeals.

However, with the continuous development of the industry in the 1980s and 1990s, software design began to value not only basic functionality but also artistic expression, which had greater development and choice space. As Nader Salha pointed out in his book "Aesthetics and Art in the Early Development of Human-Computer Interfaces," "format specifications and mathematical reasoning must be combined with informal, intuitive, aesthetic experiences. If we want computers to be more widely accepted, the gap between science and literature must also be bridged."

The unique vertical display and child-friendly graphical user interface of the Xerox Star in the 1980s, the pattern and color design of early Windows operating systems (even including the Clippy assistant), fun early software like Kid Pix, and the translucent, fruity design of the iMac in the 1990s all reflect this trend. In terms of the appearance and user experience of computers, these products conveyed their unique insights while also hinting at their target audience.

However, during this period, personal computers had not yet become widely popular, and only a small portion of people used them. Therefore, the software of the time was often developed for a specific group or even for an individual. For example, Kid Pix was born because a father saw his son struggling to learn MacPaint and created this simple and more fun software. At that time, software did not need to have a large audience, and computers did not need to promote their use for that reason.

Today, various software is continuously expanding its market, attempting to solve all problems at once. But this also means that their target market has become everyone in the market.

Diverse Designs, Limited Functions

With the surge of software in the 2010s, an aesthetic concept known as "skeuomorphic design" also emerged. Well-known tech companies like Microsoft and Apple began to embrace this realistic style that resonates with users, leaning towards using shiny interfaces (like Windows Vista and iOS 6). They adopted well-known symbolic icons (like trash cans and folders), successfully making this design style both eye-catching and easy for new users to understand.

To make everything on the screen look as realistic as possible, this type of software generally does not need to define a style or stance; it only needs to reflect the external world.

However, as social culture moves towards a flatter and more minimalist direction, many tech companies have begun to adjust their current brand styles accordingly, ultimately becoming indistinguishable. This minimalist style draws on Apple's clean curves, Swiss graphic design, Bauhaus modernism (a misinterpretation of Bauhaus), modern sans-serif fonts, and soft color methods, creating an appearance that feels familiar and approachable to the target audience (millennials and an increasing number of Gen Z).

From Airbnb to Google to Spotify, this is an era for consumer (and even corporate) brands that feel approachable, and our lives have been defined by the commodification of these brands.

Although these brands employ a lot of clean lines, gradients, and circular patterns, they have not garnered particular affection from people. Moreover, even though these brands have been striving to attract the "right" groups to use their software, it is difficult to establish truly valuable connections with users—its products feel like a uniquely styled blank slate.

Return to Specificity

We have returned to the starting point in the design of software and tech brands. The original intention of software design was to target specific groups, even just one individual. However, during the design process, in an effort to broaden the audience, the target group has gradually expanded, ultimately losing its original characteristics. Since the tech industry has recognized this widespread brand identity crisis, we should refocus on specificity to attract users more broadly.

But how can software and tool designers achieve this? What is the style of software?

Style design is far more complex than simply using a striking color or drawing a fun skeuomorphic icon. It is difficult to provide a specific definition, but generally, it refers to the overall experience a person has when interacting with something. Style design is not merely about adding color patterns or animations to corporate software pages for optimization; it is about the special feelings that users can accept and resonate with during their use of the software.

Style holds significant importance for our economy, society, and each of us; we can showcase our current personal image and expected image through style. People generally believe that style is the driving force behind consumers' purchase decisions when buying products like clothing, and I believe the same applies to the tech and software fields.

For example, people are willing to pay $30 a month for a well-designed email client and even willing to be placed on a waiting list, partly because it not only provides a unique experience but also allows them to feel the soul and core of its design—every editorial design background, every communication with users, and every micro-animation has its purpose. Today, it is this style that organically spreads product culture to those aesthetically discerning high-end users.

However, style is not just about purpose and attraction; it can also be the key to software companies like Notion standing out from the beginning. Notion not only has a clean operating page and delightful illustrations but also features a highly playable citation function, allowing it to stand out among note-taking applications. Although these characteristics may not serve any functional purpose, they resonate with users and their philosophy, cultivating a loyal audience.

I believe what they are doing is reintegrating consciousness and thought into the design framework of software, allowing software to have its own attitude. For instance, Linear’s smooth and bright interface and concise and effective tool methods demonstrate its obsession with pixel-perfect quality, which is truly captivating. Similarly, products like Cash App vividly show us how style design can break the shackles of traditional industries, making traditional financial tools memorable and intriguing. From the company’s webpage illustrations to its tone of voice, it all conveys one thing— they are striving (and in most cases succeeding) to make their products synonymous with coolness in the eyes of millennials and Gen Z.

It is precisely the significant connection between Cash App's style and its mission to "redefine the relationship between the world and money" that allows it to attract its target audience so powerfully. This spirit is reflected in every aspect of the brand, from its clothing line to the storytelling of its brand narrative, encompassing this core spirit. Among them, it has designed the brand story as a mini-site called "My First Bitcoin and the Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto," which introduces the product's functions and advantages—everything aligns with their mission, representing a cultural advancement for the financial industry.

Although platforms like these successfully attract users, we still need to explore a deeper question: the relationship between community and identity. While Crypto once prioritized functionality over form, the field has recently begun to pay more attention to style, becoming a leader among all industries that leverage style as a competitive advantage.

Today, the Crypto industry vividly demonstrates the organic combination of style, identity, and community, while also drawing heavily from the well-established style hype models of the art and fashion industries—namely auctions and airdrops—to drive industry growth, create scarcity, and attract early users. Once you become a member of the Crypto community, whether it’s the choice of wallet or the type of Cryptopunk you want to buy, it is closely related to your identity.

Reflecting on the Past, Guiding the Future

Stepping back, we have already become acutely aware of the terrifying nature of online fatigue during the pandemic—excessive notifications and various applications, along with a plethora of information browsing and online meetings, have left us exhausted. This sentiment has sparked nostalgia for the past way of interacting with technology, when technology felt both novel and interesting, and we had more space for self-selection.

In the design field, we can see the shadow of this nostalgic sentiment from 8-bit art, pixel art, to Pokémon. This represents a retrograde "return" where functionality is once again prioritized over form, and these forms undoubtedly reflect that software is trying to target a smaller, more precise audience. In light of this, websites like Craigslist and Are.na resonate with people: they simulate an internet-style and primitive button form that feels bold and interesting in this modern context. Compared to the modern tools we frequently use today, which are often generic with blue logos (and it is these stylistically uniform tools that have created the aforementioned monotony), such web tools can be considered quite unique. While it may not resonate with you, it is better to sprout new leaves from the old than to remain stagnant in the new.

On the other hand, style design can make large tech companies that attempt to reshape their brands appear lacking in faith and depth. In other words, their brand image design is merely for show, completely disconnected from their actual behavior and personality, failing to resonate with people. This issue of style distortion often occurs in large companies when they attempt to unify the appearance of numerous sub-brands; in the name of brand consistency, they turn each sub-brand into another indistinguishable copy.

I believe we have no reason to retain the stylistic characteristics of sub-brands, as people care more about the consistency of style rather than the organizational structure of a brand (unless it truly affects the software's user experience). While it is true that style is difficult to regulate due to the changing subjective feelings and understandings of employees, some large companies have managed to do so, such as Apple, which has successfully maintained its consistent style. The reason lies in Apple's very detailed brand guidelines, hiring employees with specific aestheticsjudgmentskills, and treating design (or as they call it, user experience) as one of the company's core values, all of which contribute significantly to achieving stylistic unity.

Conclusion

People are beginning to evaluate software from the perspective of style and user experience, indicating a shift in how people view technology. Technology has become a part of social and personal characteristics in people's eyes, no longer just a soulless, thoughtless tool. Software has long since detached from mere usability, becoming closely related to our lives. In this new environment, the stylistic characteristics of software can directly reflect its design philosophy and target audience, yet many tech brands today have failed to apply this to their products.

"As we shape tools, tools also shape us in return," this concept has become a widespread consensus in today's world, and how will software companies in such a world use the power of art to reshape our social culture? More importantly, for us designers and builders, how can we create our work environment to allow teams with similar stylistic philosophies to design more human-centered software?