Linear vs. non-linear design: Which is better and when?
Neither linear design nor non-linear designs are inherently better, as the best user experience is the one that’s designed for your users specifically. To understand what your users want, you’d have to research them. That being said, linear design is somewhat based on decades of UX research, making it one of the best design languages around, so it certainly wouldn’t be a bad choice. It’s also quite minimal, so the opportunity to adapt or build upon its solid foundations is always there.
When should linear design be used vs. avoided?
Linear design should never be avoided. If you were to leverage all of the inherent UX best practices we’ve learned as an industry over the years, you’d end up with a design language that’s pretty much identical to linear design anyway. Plus, as I mentioned before, it’s very minimal, so if it doesn’t meet the needs or wants of your users, you can adapt or build upon it. There’s plenty of opportunity to ‘add’ to linear design without taking away from what makes it good.
Another option is to ‘roll back’ to an earlier version of linear design, which is simply the Radix UI component library, and start building from there. This could make it easier to craft a more unique identity for your product, again without taking too much away from what makes linear design an excellent design language.
Is linear’s design trend overused in the tech industry?
Earlier versions of Linear’s website, which took more creative liberties than it does today, certainly became overused in the tech industry, most notably on the marketing pages of SaaS products.
The problem with other companies imitating a design style is that every design then looks the same, which is something that many people complained about. Linear’s brand in particular (at least in terms of visual identity) was destroyed because even though they pioneered the style, it was no longer special, and people were sick of seeing it.
This is why they created a new style, if we can even call it that. Their new style doesn’t use gradients, barely uses color, and in fact looks pretty barebones. It can be imitated, sure, but it doesn’t really express a visual identity, so any imitation going forward is unnoticeable. Does not having a visual identity impact Linear negatively? Well, I can’t answer that, but their circumstance has enabled them to go all-in on their design language, which is arguably better than it’s ever been. Nowadays, it’s almost as if ‘user experience’ is their entire personality, and I mean that in only a good way.
This is in contrast to Apple, for example, which presents itself as an innovator of form, a perhaps unsustainable strategy given that their most recent gimmick — Liquid Glass — left people pretty divided from the get-go.
In short, Linear now has an inimitable design language that has left their imitators, now presenting an outdated, unlike design style, all the while fine-tuning the design language of their design system. This strategy also protects them from imitation in the future, a leverage that, again, Apple doesn’t have.
But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use linear design. In fact, it’s now an incredible design language that you can use without imitating anybody’s visual identity, and perhaps signals renewed interest in function over form.
Does linear design improve conversion rates?
No such study has ever proved or disproved whether linear design improves conversion rates. A study like this would involve redesigning several websites, UX benchmarking them against their original designs, and then calculating how many of those redesigns improved conversion rates. Plus, the layout, content, and features would have to remain the same to confirm that the linear design language specifically improved conversion rates, and not any other factor(s).
However, you could totally run a UX benchmarking study like this yourself. In fact, A/B testing can change incrementally or wholesale (with pros and cons for both), and is highly recommended as part of any UX design process.
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