Function & Fashion

Introduction
Debating about function and fashion has never ceased. To a certain extent, it seems that these two concepts are mutually exclusive. But is it really so? This blog will talk about the relation between them.

1. Function and Fashion Are Not Mutually Exclusive
An expert LaTeX user may think that LaTeX is a lot better than a GUI Word Processor System such as Microsoft Word because it is more powerful and MS Word's more fancy GUI is just useless.

While it is indeed true that LaTeX could produce documents of better quality (in a sense that it is more "functional"), it is also a lot more difficult to learn and consumes more time in producing simpler documents. MS Word on the other hand, might not be able to produce as beautiful documents as LaTeX, but its "useless" GUI in nerds' mind could be a life-saver for novice computer users for its intuitiveness and WYSIWYG feature.
Thus we could see that fashion and function are not mutually exclusive, and they are even exchangeable sometimes.
For a more detailed comparison between MS Word and LaTeX, click here.


2. Fashion Could Become Function
A good example to illustrate this point is "Dock" in Macintosh OS. It is fashionable because it has got cute icons with magnification effects. At the same time this "fashion" also make it crystal clear for the user to see what tasks are running in the system; furthermore, Dock allows easy access to resources on the system in an intuitive way. In this sense, Dock with cool effects is functional as well.

3. Fashion Could Destroy Function
If not applied properly, fashion could destroy function. Think about the iPhone, which is considered as one of the most fashionable and creative gadgets ever invented. But let's see what if its fashion is improperly used. The image below is a screenshot of an iPhone application called "Proposal". What it does is to display "Will you marry me" on the screen. The designer of this application thinks that iPhone users will use it to propose to their girl friends. But come on, only someone who wants a broken iPhone and a broken relationship would use it!

4. Function & Fashion: Understand the Purpose
Design metrics for different systems could be entirely different. For systems that are frequently used for production purpose, efficiency is the paramount and fascinating UI is not necessary. While for more casual systems that users would not use frequently (like many websites), the UI design is of more importance because it has to be appealing to the user. The image below is a UI comparison of a stock trading system and the famous Apple website. Notice the sharp distinction between the styles and feelings, which illustrates the importance to use different design metrics for systems with different purposes.

5. Non-anthropomorphic Design
Many people think it fashionable and desirable if a computer could "talk"and "think" like human beings. While it may seem appealing, currently it is still a widely-accepted paradigm that non-anthropomorphic design is a better approach, for the following reasons:

• Although anthropomorphic design may appeal to some users, it will produce anxiety for others.

• Suggestion that computers can think gives users an erroneous model as to how they work.

6. Siri May Change the Paradigm

Released together with iPhone 4S, Siri is a high precision voice recognition system that could be used for many tasks such as sending text messages, setting reminders and searching for contents. If it indeed proves to be as powerful as Apple claims, it might change the paradigm that anthropomorphic design is not a sensible approach.

Conclusion

Function and Fashion are not mutually exclusive at all. On the other hand, in many cases it is hard to distinguish one from the other. As a designer, it is of vital importance to identify the nature of the system to be designed and apply design metrics accordingly. Like computer hardware, HCI design guidelines and trends are also constantly evolving. Many paradigms like non-anthropomorphic design could be shifted as technology advances and people's mind evolves.