3 ways UX Design and Feng Shui Overlap

Photo by Jéan Béller via unsplash

At first glance, Feng Shui and UX Design seem to be in totally different realms. But looking closer, they have a lot in common. Feng shui aims to harmonize people with their surroundings such as their home or workspaces. UX Design encompasses designing digital experiences for optimum ease of use, functionality, and delight. They both aim to improve people’s lives through design and require an understanding of human behavior. Here I’ll highlight three concepts they have in common.

1) Balance

Feng Shui is a practice and philosophy that has been used for thousands of years to create comfortable, supportive, and nourishing environments. This is accomplished through balance. Adept Feng Shui practitioners influence Yin and Yang — the complimentary, yet opposing forces that make up the universe, to harmonize spaces. An immediate expression of Yin and Yang are the five elements: water, wood, fire, earth, and metal, known as the Wu Xing.

Yin and Yang — Balance in motion

Feng Shui has been described as the art of placement. One aspect of Feng Shui focuses on balancing the energy in the home through interior design by way of furniture placement, color, and cures, to only name a few. A common practice would be to balance the water element in the bathroom by incorporating wood elements like potted plants and wood colors like browns and greens.

Balance plays a major role within User Experience Design. Balance between business goals and user goals, content and design, layout, interaction, and typography. A skilled UX designer is a master of balance.

Allowing for whitespace and balance between elements is easier on the eyes and prevents cognitive overload.

2) Decluttering

Creating functional, harmonious spaces (online or in the physical world) requires a discerning eye. One that ruthlessly removes all that is unnecessary.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest