What Makes an Interface Feel Good
When I think about the value of a digital product, I see two broad aspects: functional value and emotional value.
Functional value is relatively easy to think about logically. We identify a problem people have and consider how to solve it. Of course, that is not simple, but we can evaluate it against somewhat shared criteria and work through improvements logically.
Emotional value is much harder. It is not so easy to explain why something “just feels good,” why we like it, or why we want to keep using it. There is no clear right answer, and it seems difficult to judge by shared criteria in the way we can with functional value. But perhaps that is also what makes it an area where a designer’s sensitivity and experience have particular value.
Why feeling good matters
I would like to think about this emotional value through the feeling of being comfortable with something.
When two products have similar features, how do people choose between them? Beyond features and price, the way something looks, how it feels to use, and a sense of familiarity with its brand probably influence that choice too.
I feel that products and brands people love over time often have this emotional value thoughtfully designed into them. Beyond being easy to use, something that “just feels good” can give people a reason to like it, choose it, and keep using it.
Making something feel good has meaning for a business too. When features become similar, it may help distinguish a product from its competitors.
But even before considering its meaning for a business, I think there is a simpler reason.
Kinya Tagawa of Takram often compares design to food, saying that a meal is not only about getting nutrients; it should taste good too.
If we thought only about getting the nutrients we need efficiently, meals would probably look very different. But if we are going to eat, we would rather enjoy the taste, and enjoying the time we spend eating is itself part of what makes life richer.
Might the same be true of digital products? Of course, it matters that they are useful tools for getting things done. But because we touch them every day, it is nicer when they feel good to use.
What contributes to that feeling
Through this publication, I am thinking about what makes an interface feel good.
“Feeling good” is a fairly vague idea. It differs from person to person, and the kind of comfort that suits a product changes with its character too.
So I decided to try breaking it down into a few elements. For now, these four are my working hypotheses.
1. Presence
Colour, type, space, shape, texture. The atmosphere of a product that we sense when we see or touch it.
Before people understand what a product does, they already receive some impression from its appearance and texture. A soft appearance, for example, can feel inviting. I think impressions like these affect our expectations of a product and how approachable it feels, even before we begin using it.
As I wrote in “The Center of Gravity in Design”, individual details such as type size, spacing, and combinations of colours may be small, but their balance can change the overall impression considerably. In “How a Tool Feels”, I wrote about ChatGPT’s relatively structured appearance and the softness I sense in Claude’s warm colours and serif type.
With digital products, there are also elements beyond what is on screen: motion, haptics, and the shape and texture of the device itself. With smart glasses, for example, however advanced their features may be, it matters whether they feel natural as glasses we wear in everyday life.
I think designing a product’s presence means bringing together the sensations of seeing and touching it to give it an atmosphere of its own.
2. Personality
Language and behaviour. The individuality and values we sense as we interact with something.
Even when conveying the same information, the choice of words, tone of voice, and timing of a response change the impression we receive. A product’s character can show in the words it uses to tell us about an error too. Through an accumulation of small behaviours like these, we sometimes sense a kind of personality in a product.
In “Apparently, AI Has Things Going On Too”, I considered how tone of voice, pauses, gaze, and behaviour that slightly surprises us might affect our relationships with machines. Responding perfectly and predictably every time is not necessarily appealing. When we cannot quite understand all the reasons for something’s behaviour, we may find a greater sense of depth in its presence.
For products in which AI communicates on its own initiative, I think designing personality becomes even more important. Having values to guide decisions can bring consistency to language and behaviour, even in unpredictable situations.
Not every product needs a deeply human, emotionally involved personality. Some may speak to us warmly, while others quietly tell us only what we need to know. I want to consider the attitude each product takes in relating to people.
3. Distance
How strongly, and at what moments, a product makes its presence felt in someone’s life.
Even a useful feature does not necessarily feel good when it is always reaching out to us. Sometimes we want information before we ask for it; sometimes we want something to wait without a word. How close it stays, and when it engages with us, can change our impression of the same feature.
The experience with smart glasses I described in “There When You Need It” prompted me to think about this distance. Information appeared in my field of view only when I needed translation, so I could keep my attention on the person I was speaking with or the scenery in front of me. Information did not always have to be at the centre of my attention. I found a new kind of comfort in its being able to move between the centre and the periphery as needed.
Sometimes we appreciate active help, and sometimes it feels right to be able to forget something is even there. The right distance changes according to how someone wants to spend time with that product.
As technology becomes more woven into everyday life, I wonder whether the demands it makes on our attention and time will have more to do with how comfortable it feels.
4. Control
Being able to decide for ourselves how much to leave to a system or AI.
As AI becomes capable of more things, there are more situations in which we can leave to a system what we used to do ourselves. That is convenient, but among the things we could hand over, there are also things we want to judge for ourselves.
In “Interfaces We Don’t Have to Operate”, I thought about a future in which AI carries out actions on screen for us. Even if we no longer need to perform every action ourselves, we can check what is happening when we need to and make our own decisions at important moments. With that reassurance, we can spend time on other things while the work is being taken care of.
At the same time, as I wrote in “Taking Time to Think in a Faster World”, doing something with our own hands can be part of thinking itself. Even if the result is the same, there are times when working through it ourselves has meaning.
I think it also matters that we can take a task back into our own hands when we need to. If we have to hand over even the parts we want to do ourselves, it may be convenient, but it will not feel comfortable. Being able to change how much we delegate, by our own choice, may be another element that shapes how good an interface feels.
These four elements are not necessarily independent. A friendly personality might still feel uncomfortable if it talks to us more than we want. An AI that actively helps us may feel a little restrictive if it anticipates even the decisions we want to make ourselves.
There is no single right answer for any of them. I think their balance changes with the kind of feeling we hope to create.
These four are only hypotheses for now, and I do not know whether they are enough. I want to keep gradually putting into words what I have sensed intuitively, and to explore it through the process of making things.