This topic is some­thing I’ve had on my “to write” list for a while, and it is mostly just some con­jec­ture about liv­ing spaces and how they are arranged. While this isn’t directly related to web design or pro­gram­ming, it is very applic­a­ble, as inte­rior design still requires many sim­i­lar con­sid­er­a­tions (albeit via a more phys­i­cal media).

I live (right now) in a dor­mi­tory suite set­ting: a “com­mon room,” with bed­rooms acces­si­ble through a hall­way off of the com­mon room. When I first moved into this suite with my suit­e­m­ates, the inevitable topic comes up: “How do you want to arrange the room?” As I’m sure you can guess, every­one has a dif­fer­ent opin­ion and taste when it comes to inte­rior design.

Per­son­ally, I’m a min­i­mal­ist. Orga­nize things smartly, increase the amount of empty space, but with­out mak­ing the space seem unwel­com­ing – zen-like, if you will. Other peo­ple, though, tend toward the clut­tered side of arrange­ments. This is when some­thing really became promi­nent to me — spaces need to—not just should—be “inten­tional” as opposed to “acci­den­tal.” The way in which a room is arranged is impor­tant to the image it por­trays, as well as the way in which peo­ple inter­act with the room; that much is very obvi­ous to most every­one. What isn’t nec­es­sar­ily as obvi­ous is that the space, espe­cially smaller spaces (as my com­mon room is), need to be arranged pur­pose­fully, where parts of the room are set out for spe­cific reasons.

Hav­ing the fur­ni­ture arranged in a cer­tain way just “because it looks good,” with­out con­sid­er­ing pur­pose or func­tion, is what hap­pened ini­tially; I call this an “acci­den­tal liv­ing space.” It may have been assem­bled with some inter­nal rea­son­ing, but with­out enough actual con­sid­er­a­tion to the way in which the spaces and the room will be used.

Even­tu­ally, I rearranged the room myself (you can only trip over the sofa so many times before it becomes a prob­lem), with con­sid­er­a­tion about how each part of the room will be used, and what pur­pose each part of the room serves. This is an “inten­tional liv­ing space.” It has been designed with func­tion and ele­gance, as opposed to sim­ply elegance.

I wish this would be applied to web design more often (and we are begin­ning to see this, slowly), as often, designs are cre­ated with less con­sid­er­a­tion about how the space on the page func­tions and more about how it looks. That sim­ply doesn’t work.

Posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 4:40 pm, under design.

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