Humans have seemingly evolved to find beauty in nature and their environment (or possibly more accurately, in the golden ratio). It is easily observed, that when surrounded by an organic habitat, people are generally happier, calmer and more at ease. On the other hand, dangerous locations and organisms tend to have non-conforming, “grotesque” appearances, making us feel uncomfortable and on edge.

Cities have rapidly taken the place of nature in providing a surrounding for our lives, but evolution hasn’t had time to catch up and so the replication of what we naturally find gratifying becomes important. It is obvious that town planning and architecture originally played the biggest role in achieving this, but as our lives continue to get busier and more reliant on automation, it becomes vital that we integrate new systems into our existing worlds in an intelligent fashion.

Community-dividing roads that can only be crossed by dangerous underpasses, steps that force us into unnatural strides, buttons on cabin lights with a two second response time, superfluous repetition of information in public announcements, signage that constantly nags us to behave in a certain way, colour schemes with a purpose to hide dirt rather than visually please, and anything using Comic Sans are all examples of distress-causing aesthetics.

At the very least, these annoyances result in feelings of discomfort and disbelief that people capable of making such glaring errors have so much control over our well-being. However, at their most extreme, the abundance of ugly and uncooperative ergonomics can be so great that forming a cohesive society around them seems like an impossibility.

It’s nothing new to highlight the importance of functional design, which is why it’s so sad that many places are still completely devoid of it.