Three myths about visual hierarchy
The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. A few things about visual hierarchy that get repeated more often than they get checked.
Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
“It only matters for big sites”
Every screen should have one obvious first thing to look at. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
“We can deal with it after launch”
Sometimes true, usually expensive. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it.
“Our platform handles it”
If everything is emphasised, nothing is. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.
How to tell if yours is fine
The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about visual hierarchy before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- If everything is emphasised, nothing is — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.