UX and the rule of Ri

The other day I was scrolling through Instagram, wasting time, and I came across this post from international pop star and underwear tycoon Rihanna.

What? Whaaaaat?

You know what – she’s right.

I screenshotted that bad boy and moved on with my life. But I didn’t really move on. Every block of text I read on a screen reminded me of it.

This week, my design partner and I began tackling a new way to display news and events that appear in Cerkl clients’ automated emails. Our goal was to find a scalable, repeatable way to make the stories our communicators need their audience to see stand out from the pack.

As we were whiteboarding, I thought back to all of the eye-tracking, and heatmapping stuff I’d based my UX assumptions on. The rule of F. The rule of Z. Those weren’t right. I really needed the rule of Ri.

So, a bit sheepishly, I shared the screenshot of Rihanna’s Instagram post with our Lead Designer. And you know what – he was into it.

He took the wisdom of that post and applied it to his solution.

Thanks to that post, I think we are well on our way to a more elegant, readable solution for our clients. Thanks, Rihanna.