Cars are sexy. They’ve got these curves and angles that look slick and refined. They (usually) come in shiny colours that can make heads turn and therefore draw attention. The way they look keeps refining over time so as to stay in touch with the trends or with the visual direction of their time.

Some, though, live forever in a “forever beautiful” state.

Others, are voted as the ugliest designs of all time – more below.

What’s the reason for that?

They resemble human beings. And naturally if you want them to be beautiful, they resemble beautiful human beings. Whatever the masses consider beautiful at that point, that’s what will “click” for designers.

Whether the match between “what’s beautiful today” and “what we’ll approve” is conscious or subconscious — that’s for psychologists to analyze. But it’s surely easy to see the correlation here.

The proof for that

Look at cars lately versus the 1962 Jaguar I’ve shown above as the first picture of this article. Beauty standards in media-covered women have changed in the last years to: more angled jawlines or facial traits, more focused/highlighted eyes (or whatever eyeliner does) and slightly more “focused”?

Or maybe aggressive is the word, though that one’s not perfect as well. What I’m saying is this: slightly frowning and having the “focused” look is more prevalent in models today than it was years ago.

But there’s another aspect. Squniching means eye contact. It also means interest and there goes a plethora of words around “arousal”.

What does that translate into?

All of the above for cars. And it’s not just sports cars that inherit that — even the almighty Prius which is considered to be the index for a classic car has that. You see them everywhere around you in major cities.

The Prius has those focused eyes, some sharp angles and a pointed front. And by talking about it, I’m just looking at a car that’s the base model. We can go on and on for days about Lamborghinis or other premium companies.

The opposite is true as well

Fiat Multipla has been voted as one of the worst designs of all time.

The reason for that becomes apparent in the narrative I just made. It’s got 4 eyes, looks like it’s been merged with another one of its own and seems to have no refined traits. Those are all signs for “unhealthy”.

And political corectness is not what I’m threading on now. It’s biologically explained that we’re going to look for healthy traits and stay away from what’s not. It’s the reason why we cover our noses when driving past a garbage disposal land — a lot of unhealthy things there.

Or why most of us are appalled by prints on various poisonous snakes, spiders or insects. And then same thing happens for bee hives close-ups. It’s called Trypophobia and it means fear of holes (don’t google it) — our body’s way of keeping us away from what looks damaging.

What does that mean for tech CEOs

It means a poorly-presented SaaS business will eventually go out of business if it doesn’t show healthy signs. Such as: clean visual identity, a website that’s adapted to their audience or an experience prepared for their users.

It means that in today’s world where there are virtually infinite amounts of information around us, we’ve adapted to make things simple and easier to understand. Quickly digestible, if you want. That has become a must, not a recommendation and the proof for that (besides what I wrote so far) lies in the Terms and Conditions pages — let me know how often you read them outside company-related activity.

Also, maybe there’s more human aspect that you are able to integrate in your product. They don’t have to be from the design realm. 

About Ch Daniel

I run chagency, an experiences design agency that specialises on helping tech CEOs reduce user churn. We believe experiences are not only the reason why users choose not to leave but also what generates word of mouth. We’re building a credo around this belief.

If I’ve brought you any kind of value, follow me and get in touch here: LinkedIn | Twitter | Email

I’ve also created an infinitely-valuable app for sneaker/fashion enthusiasts called Legit Check that impacted hundreds of thousands over millions of times – check it out at chdaniel.com/app

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