Rome, Sweet Rome: Ancient Lessons in Design
March 12th, 2008 in Design Inspiration
by: Matthew Griffin
When I arrived late to my first panel on Saturday morning at SXSWi 2008 I thought I had accidentally walked in on a reading for a book-on-tape. (lead user experience director at Corel) was the singular presenter, reading off her notes word for word in a timid voice that had the whole audience leaning forward and tilting an ear. I have to admit that Jennifer's departure from the typical in-your-face SXSWi panelist style felt a little alien at first but as I listened, I began to warm up to it. By the end of the panel, I was captivated. Fraser had very effectively taken the system of architectural design principles developed by Vitruvius in ancient Rome and applied them to modern interactive design.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a brilliant Roman architect and engineer who lived in the last century BC. The influence of his work stretched to the renaissance in the form of Da Vinci's famous vitruvian man and his principles of architecture are still referenced today. In his only surviving work, De Architectura , Vitruvius posits three elementary principles of good architectural design—durability, convenience, and beauty.
In architecture, the concept of durability is most closely associated with the foundation of the structure. Of course, it's always important to build on foundations that will last and use materials that are durable. But, as Fraser explained, in in website design we are given foundations that are anything but durable and consistent. Our work must be rendered on multiple browsers in multiple operating systems all presenting their own set of quirks. This shaky foundation leaves the web designer with no option but to fail gracefully. An example of this was made out of FireFox's new "restore session" feature. In case you've never used it (I can't imagine anyone reading this hasn't), it prompts you to restore the various windows and tabs you had open in the event of an unexpected shutdown. Mozilla realized that sometimes, their browser will crash. Instead of throwing their hands up, they provided a way to fail gracefully.
Convenience was next on the list. Vitruvius' definition of convenience had to do with appropriately placing rooms in a house. First, laying them them out in an organization that made sense for the purpose of the house. Then making clear distinction between common and private rooms. Jennifer transfers the first definition of convenience to interactive design in terms of usability. In Vitruvius' words, "Perfection of style that arises out of adherence to authoritative principles." In web design we educate ourselves in these authoritative principles every time we read an article on A List Apart or pick up a book on UX. The second part of convenience is discussed in terms of ethics in pulling and pushing data to and from the end user. We should always knock loudly before entering a private room of one of our visitors.
Beauty was the last principle discussed. Vitrivius understood beauty as fitness in the adjustments of the members of a structure. I think Jennifer perfectly encapsulated this concept in a quote from Vitrvius. "...the eye is always in search of beauty, and if we do not gratify its desire for pleasure by proportionate enlargement in these measures... a clumsy and awkward appearance will be presented to the beholder."
I'm interested in developing these concepts further. Fraser's last diagram in her presentation was a fascinating attempt at building an objective metric by which to measure the effectiveness of a design. This type of approach is virtually unheard of in the modern climate of relativism, and it brings up some interesting ideas related to applying a Christian worldview to design.
Update 3/17/08: Jennifer Fraser was kind enough to drop by Bits O' NewMedia and post a link to her presentation. If you are interested in seeing the original, .
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Comments
Posted By: Jeff O'Connor on 03/12/08
Hi, Matt. I am a faithful subscriber to your blog and admire your talent. I enjoy your postings, and this one is no exception. I appreciate your report on Fraser's attempt to quantify the effectiveness of a design as 1) I was not able to attend SXSWi 2008 myself, and 2) there's a psychology to design that gives her thesis some validity - at least when applied to certain groups under certain circumstances for certain purposes. That being said, I think you're *really* reaching to put a "Christian" spin on what Fraser was proposing with your last comment. I understand that within certain Christian circles there's a belief that "relativism" is a corrosive and relatively recent vantage point for looking at the world, and that when applied to morality is particularly odious. I'll not address the merits of that belief one way or another, but I will point out that beauty, and by extension, design has always been and always will be in the eye of the beholder. Keeping in mind that the Greeks established the "authoritative principles" that has steered much of what the West views as beautiful the past two thousand or so years, it was the Romans who "debased" the Greek ideal of beauty in sculpture through realistic portraiture. Polycleitus probably would have been appalled by the work of later Roman masters, both in terms of subject matter and final product. Yet it was the willingness of the Romans to take a different - a relative - view of what was beautiful to create those works, which in turn would go on to inspire exquisite pieces like Michelangelo's Pietà. Some things lend themselves better to application of the so-called "Christian worldview" than others; I don't think that design is really one of them. Still, it's your blog and that's your thing, so whatever works for you is fine with me.
Posted By: on 03/12/08
Jeff, thanks for subscribing and thanks for the well thought out comment. Sorry if I was a little vague at the end of the article regarding Christian worldview. I am not implying that beauty can be measured on a simple one-dimensional scale. I simply meant that I would like to take some time to compare her system with the Christian system of thought. You are right in saying that many Christian have mistaken diversity for relativism in the past. I will not make that mistake. We can look at the diversity in the Trinity and see that no single member is more important or "beautiful" than another. We see that design reflects this diversity and we should appreciate the differences in creative works.
Posted By: John Rockefeller on 03/13/08
Excuse my ignorance, but as a non-Christian I am wondering what the link between web design/web development and Christianity is? The article seemed to make a lot of sense up until that point.
Posted By: on 03/13/08
John, thanks for your comment. Historically, Christianity has stood out as a comprehensive worldview. It speaks to all areas of life. This is a little different than the common view of Christianity as another mystical or mythological tradition. When you see Christianity as a worldview, it has a great deal to do with web design. I can't do the topic justice here, but I will be continuing to develop these idea in subsequent posts. Christian or non-Christian, I think you will get something useful out of it.
Posted By: Wesley C. Griffin on 03/16/08
I have heard it said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." I don't believe that is true. You may disagree with the criteria, but just as there is universal truth, and universal justice, there is universal beauty. We would like to believe that we get to determine those things, but in truth, One greater than us establishes those things.
Posted By: Jennifer Fraser on 03/17/08
Matthew, thank you for attending my presentation at SXSW. I will try and make sure I project my voice more next time around :-) I also wanted to thank you for your thoughtful post. I have just begun exploring the relationship between those 3 aspirational Vitruvian ideals and interaction design and as you mention in your final paragraph I believe it does provide us with an interesting way to examine where we "are" with a product, in relation to those three ideals. I also wanted to let you know that I have posted the presentation on slideshare (with my speaking notes appended to the end of it) so it is available if you wanted to look at it again:
Posted By: on 03/17/08
Jennifer, it's an honor to have you here. Your presentation was fascinating and I don't think you need to change your style at all. It was a nice break from the rest of SXSW. I will post the link to your presentation as an update to the article.