How having the wrong level of zoom can distort design feedback
The way art-boards look doesn’t necessarily match reality
I notice that many people (myself included) tend to create, observe, present, and critique designs in a zoomed out state. This can be the case when looking at work-in-progress designs in an application like Sketch or Figma — or even when looking at a mock-up that’s been printed out.
With a zoomed-out view, you can easily end up seeing twice the screen real estate or more compared to what users would typically see when using the product for real. This provides a better overview of the page, but can also skew perceptions of how well the design is working in a few subtle ways. Once you become consciously aware of these effects you may find that they actually come into play a surprising amount.
Here are a few problems you’ll come across when looking at a zoomed-out view:
1. Individual elements stand out less
Because you can see more at once, individual elements will have to compete more fiercely to stand out among the other elements on the page. Consider the example in the image below. A stakeholder looking at the view on the left may think that the yellow button in the top right doesn’t stand out enough — even though it’s…
