TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

I’m watching PBS’s documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright, and his design philosophy struck me as terribly insightful. He called it “organic architecture”:

It is not a style of imitation, because he did not claim to be building forms which were representative of nature. Instead, organic architecture is a reinterpretation of nature’s principles as they had been filtered through the intelligent minds of men and women who could then build forms which are more natural than nature itself.

This is not only apt for architecture, but application design as well.

Applications should be designed based first on the device they’re on (an application on the Mac, iPhone or iPad must all be very different, by necessity of how the device works), and then their function. UI designers must figure out precisely what function the application will serve, and then design it so it is absolutely perfect for it.

This also means that real-world designs shouldn’t be copied for the sake of being “realistic.” Rather, they should be carefully studied to understand why they are that way. If we can understand the principle behind it, then we can make an even better UI, unencumbered by the limits of physical materials and processes. We can make it more natural than nature itself.