Three Aspects of Digital Aesthetics

 Aesthetics is an important principle for either product design or business innovation to convey the digital charm. 

According to the dictionary: Aesthetics is the philosophical theory or set of principles governing the idea of beauty at a given time and place. The digital aesthetics is relating to the philosophy and science of business management maturity from functioning to firm to delight. Can aesthetics be condensed into such a formula as simple as design = aesthetics + functionality? Is it possible to build a universal set of aesthetics standard for design purpose and running a people-centric and high mature digital organization?

Digital organizations are living systems with delightful characteristics and innovation nature: Digital organizations are like the living things, imitate the nature in many perspectives. Nature is delightful! Delight is reflected in the expression of joy that overflows with aesthetic appreciation and abundant gratitude to nature. Aesthetics is one of the important characteristics of the digital quality and the crucial perspective of design thinking. The purpose of design thinking is to make ‘delightful’ things and lift the organizational maturity from ‘functioning to firm to delight.’ Digital delight has a multifaceted perspective of building a customer-centric business. The goal of enhancing digital aesthetics is to harness and leverage innovative and creative ideas to produce quality products or services to delight customers. Delight is in fact, a high stage of the business maturity achieved through creating the synergy of collaboration, experimenting with initial concepts, and making practical implementations. To enforce digital aesthetics, interdisciplinary science should be applied to digital management which involves applied science and engineering, art and design, principle and philosophy, cognition and psychology, social norms and culture, group behavior and sociology, etc, for either producing intuitive products or providing delightful services.

Aesthetics is an important principle for doing designs: Digital is the era of people and options, or simply put, "personalization." Though beauty is in the eyes of beholders, there are still some common standards about aesthetics such as clarity, simplicity, and elegance, etc. Where can you add or subtract from aesthetics, or even multiply to make the design delightful? Functionality is a solid concept when designing something, but you should also keep up with the regular or current aesthetics standard, to make the design delightful. Even so, in some aspect or detail, you can never detach from your own influences, visual culture, and in an unconscious level, you may be limiting the process of creation and the very response to the problem you are trying to solve. Design gurus can predict what fashion or design trend will do, and, therefore, determine what will be considered aesthetically pleasing tomorrow rather than today! First - aesthetics as trends in public taste. Second - exposure to the designed environment as a direct influence on those trends! It is the age to connect the dots between science and arts, functioning and delight.

Aesthetics could be the digital rule to run a people-centric high mature organization: In the world of mathematics, the numeric value is called "phi," named for the Greek sculptor Phidias. The famous Fibonacci sequence has captivated mathematicians, artists, designers, and scientists for centuries. Throughout history, the ratio for length to width of rectangles of 1.61803 39887 has been considered the most pleasing to the eye. It occurs in nature everywhere from nautilus shells to sunflower seeds. Also known as the Golden Ratio which captures the certain pattern of natural beauty. Neuroscientists try to find if the human brain is "hard-wired" to respond to something in a positive way. The golden ratio was used in architecture long before the Greeks though it may not have been specifically designed. The modern digital world is hyperconnected and interdependent with unprecedented digital convenience powered by digital platforms and tools, through the internet, each individual gets more and more exposed to the same stimuli eventually resulting in similar notions of aesthetics. So, at a certain level, will eventually aesthetics becomes globally generalized, and the design principle also becomes a digital rule to run a high mature organization?

Business is moving up the maturity from functioning to firm to delight. Aesthetics is an important principle for either product design or business innovation to convey the digital charm. Though it is subjective to some degree; it’s possible to have some common criteria such as the golden ratio to wow customers or delight audience. It is an important quality factor and a unique characteristic of digital maturity.

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