To have a great design, first you need a good one.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki

No tirade about LinkedIn this week. Despite spending more time this week on the platform than I have for weeks. That will at least save a few hundred words. If you follow me at all there, you'll notice we launched a new company this week. Titan Medical. I'm going to do a formal post about the whole operation next week, so keep an eye out for that.

This week, however, I really wanted to do the follow up to last week's post. Last week I dove into why details matter in design. Particularly even if, maybe especially if, the end user doesn't actually notice those details. Which is likely. I recommend reading that article first if you haven't already.

This week, I want to step back and look at holistic design.

The Halo

You've heard of the halo effect? To quote Investopedia directly:

The halo effect is a term for a consumer's favoritism toward a line of products due to positive experiences with other products by this maker. The halo effect is correlated to brand strength, brand loyalty, and contributes to brand equity.

Put simply, the halo effect is the positive perception of a brand or person based on positive experiences with that brand or person. In branding, the halo effect is often a collective perception. Note I said perception. In the article I linked above, the origin of the term appears to have come from a paper by psychologist Edward L. Thorndike titled "The Constant Error in Psychological Ratings". This paper specifically pointed out how once a person has a halo effect, they can be incorrectly attributed other qualities as well.

One brand with a bright halo is Apple. And, unwavering from Thorndike's paper, we attribute quality to Apple products, thus we also incorrectly attribute longevity and/or repairability.

A good halo has everything to do with the vibe, maybe even a herdvibe, and nothing to do with the details. In fact, a robust halo is most effective if you ignore the details entirely.

The Holistic

As I said last week, I'm a stickler for details. While I'm competent at creating beautiful designs, I'm not a Disciple Of The Form. I don't live and breathe aesthetics. I could never be, nor do I want to be, an automotive designer. Which is fine. Industrial Design is a spectrum.

That said, it is not possible to create design without taking at least some kind of a holistic look at what you're trying to achieve. The overall design is what you hang your details on.

One day I really want to do a break down of Gestalt principals, specifically in how they relate to ID rather than UI or graphic design. Suffice to say, Gestalt principals play a large role in how we understand what a device does and how we should interact with it. I mention this because Gestalt principles only work when you look at them holistically. You cannot identify similar elements if you only see one element. You cannot recognise patterns if you only see a single behaviour.

The holistic design is what sets the tone of your product, and you absolutely have to get it right.

Holistic In

As with details, holistic design starts with user needs.

When looking at the details, you're watching for little tells that indicate the true source of a problem, or avoiding distraction to keep an eye on what the hands are doing. When looking at holistic needs you're taking a step back to look at the overall picture. This is often called the context.

When trying to understand user needs, and especially when when trying to get a feel for the environment in which the device will exist, we often look at the surrounding space. In medical devices this is often the hospital ward, or the operating theatre, or the home kitchen. This is great when trying to design a device that fits within or contrasts against the user environment, but we shouldn't stop there.

Both ISO 13485 and ISO 14971 speak heavily to the processes of supplying medical devices as well as just the design and use of them. Not just manufacturing either, but also transport, storage and installation. This is a whole-of-life perspective of medical devices, and as such must be considered as part of quality and risk management. These are non-negotiable. When designing a new device, even if not a medical device, don't just stop at the surrounding environment and the macro user experience. Zoom out and look at the supply chain, environmental, financial, and social infrastructures that sustain that environment.

Holistic Out

In contrast to a detail-oriented approach, creating a holistic design is very human-centred. It's about creating the halo. Crafting the design in such a way that creates the right feel and right perception. Even if those things are fraudulent (further reading here and here).

There's plenty of techniques for doing this. Form, proportion, colour. Each one of these is it's own deep dive, but in combination set the tone of a product. They are almost always psychological tricks. It's why medical devices are white. As the design is developing, it should always be checked against its context, including its users who will be far more interested in the general vibe than your special little details.

One trap I see designers occasionally fall into is once their overall design is in place and they begin drilling down into the details, they lose sight of the overall. Sometimes the details can completely derail the overall design intent if they're not careful. Unless the intention is to deliberately design in a 'trip step' to disrupt the user in some specific way, the details should always and continually be cross-referenced with the holistic design.

Not Only Holistic

A strong holistic design, however, will only ever make for a good design. Your product cannot subsist on good vibes alone. At least not for long. The details are essential to making a good design great, but in turn great details cannot redeem a design that misses the mark in every other way.

My preferred process is always an outside-inside-outside approach. Understand the wider context, then work towards the nuanced user needs, finally validate those again against the context. Likewise in design, start with the holistic design and work towards refining the details before validating them against the holistic design. And always and continually cross-validate the design with the needs.

Halo in the holistic.

Devil in the details.