When we talk about dominance in terms of design we’re speaking about the focal point of the design. The area of the design your eye get’s drawn to. Usually the first thing you see in a design is the dominant design feature. An effective designer can guide their user through their design by using the dominance principle. This an effective way to show the entry way to the design and also an effective way to show the user what you (the designer) deem as important. Dominance can be achieved through size, density, color and whitespace. Source
Dominance: Source
Dominance: Online
Dominance: Real life
I really appreciated this articulation of a principle that is often captured in other areas of UX & Design. In popular culture, we often see cartoons or stock art where the critical button—say, the missile launch button—is big and red. While it is the most critical object in the story, focusing watchers on that part of the narrative, a big red button that launches a missile would be a dominance inversion, encouraging the user action meant for the most rare, most carefully considered scenario that does not warrant catching the user’s eye in casual use.
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/12/15/button-isnt/
Hi Sarah :),
Thanks again for another great example. I like how you used the missile launch button for dominance. This button can be the loudest and most dominant button on the panel of buttons but (hopefully) the least used. This is a good example of how not to use dominance in physical form especially if it’s supposed to be rarely used. I think a good example of something that doesn’t have dominance and for a good reason is the reset button on the back of a router that needs to be pressed with a needle to work.