Embracing Horror Vacui

“There’s too much white space” — your stakeholder
“But Occam’s Razor, Hick’s Law, Paradox of Choices” — you

This is a conversation we’ve faced far too often. While these are universal principles of design, they aren’t necessarily the law. And it’s not a design crime if you experience horror vacui.

Here’s an example of a redesign of a search page that we did.

I am sure immediately you will notice the design on the left is easier to scan, understand, clean, human, it checks off all the universal principles of design. However, the after version performed better in terms of engagement, conversion, and overall faster time to complete the task. Why would that be?

7 reasons why:

1. Focus on Users: In a bid to consumerize search results, we ignored the primary persona of our users in the 1st design. Our customers were mostly business developers who came from finance or consulting background who spent endless hours in worksheets and slides. For them, excel is not just a solution, but a sentiment, an environment that’s familiar and makes them feel proficient. An excel-like design came as an extension to their daily tasks.
2. Fewer clicks: There are far too many articles popularizing 3 clicks or less, and even more villainizing the same. The main contextual difference in our approach was this task was repetitive, which would be performed several times a day, 5 days a week. We wanted to reduce the time it would take users to do this daily, and even automate parts of it, making our users efficient and less error-prone. The second design although more content heavy, removed the need for the user to click to learn more. They could make that decision by quickly scanning the necessary info before even clicking further.
3. 5 Hat Rack: With over 20 possible filters and columns of results, we chunked them by category ordered by the most to the least frequent. This further reduced the time to filter and analyze results. While both designs were organized by categories, the 1st design required scanning per result, which increased the overall time for decision making. For the 2nd design, it was far easier to spot the missing info especially when users are used to reading left to right.
4. Customizations and defaults: Going by the excel is a sentiment, we built a default view based on user feedback. This view could be customized (view/remove columns, change order, save presets) per user/per session. While it's great to make the users not think (in case of the first design), it is also important to design for your experts and providing them with shortcuts and advanced methods of using the product. Ultimately, you have to decide which segment to focus on, in our case the choice was clear as described in 1.
5. Direct manipulation: Beyond the global search bar, we also added searchable columns with sort by functions. But it can become busy when you are utilizing every pixel. To balance the noise, we added a lightbox while also displaying the rest of the filter options. This improved recognition instead of recall. Once again, designs shouldn’t be limited to how to use, but also how does it make your users feel. With these advanced functions, our users felt like experts which ultimately was a big win for the design.
6. Progressive display: When you are counting every pixel, the contextual progressive display quickly becomes your friend. Emphasizing actions that are possible only upon certain selections or boolean filters that are relevant per query type, these were some concepts we designed using progressive display. They’re also a contextual method of providing feedback to users on their selections, making them less error-prone.
7. Colors: While contrast can bring attention when there is a lot of information, it needs to be consistent and meaningful. The obvious ones like a good, medium, bad were added. In addition to that, we also added more neutral palettes aligned with our style guides to highlight related information.

In summary, horror vacui isn’t bad per se, it depends on the outcome you are going for. Its cliche, but work backward from your customer. Put yourself in their shoes, don’t just wear them, walk in them, run in them, day in and day out. And see how it impacts your design philosophy.