Epicenter Design

I stumbled across this useful little article from Jason Fried from last year on ‘Epicenter Design’ this morning.

As Jason points out, it’s easy to get into the habit of starting a page layout with the ‘givens’ — elements such as the logo, search boxes, footers, etc — and finish by ‘pouring in’ the purpose of the page into whatever remains.

‘Epicenter Design’ reverses this process by identifying each page’s epicenter — the element that gives the page it’s purpose — and designing outwards from it.

A simple and relatively subtle change, but I think one that puts what the user is trying to do in sharper focus.