Visual narratives: telling a story through visual design
According to Curt Cloninger, “Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus”.
Since the early days of web design and development, the enduring perception has lingered of a clash between two incompatible approaches.
According to the somewhat exaggerated popular concept of brain lateralisation, these might correspond to ‘right brain’ thinking (represented by art and aesthetics) and ‘left brain’ thinking (represented by engineering or usability).
This, of course, is simply not the case. Any website, (or any other form of communication) needs a combination of them all to be successful, and as the discipline of user experience (UX) has matured over the past few years this perceived divide has begun to contract.
Today, UX professionals are using the basic tools of visual communication to provide clearer, more intuitive user journeys.