lessons from USAF brutalism
yesterday i spent a couple hours at the national museum of the air force in dayton ohio. military design and engineering is always a fascinating topic because of the varied constraints they deal with which are much less important for civilian designs.
websites are obese and getting heavier and there’s a fascinating trend which piques my interest called brutalism – inspired from brutalist architecture which itself was a response to more optimistic and opulent styles of previous designs.
in many ways the goals of brutalist web design follow those of military aviation – herein are scattered lessons i learned while touring the museum as they relate to software.
the reactionist view to intricate, hand-crafted, artisanal web experiences can be summarized by a user goal listed on uxbrutalism.com:
for good reason many of us in the industry labor over how best to present our websites in order to help our customers accomplish their goals. sometimes we forget that a common and legitimate goal is simply to read the things on the web page.
