A Hundred Concrete Ways to Say "Looks Good"
Tell AI "make it look better" and it can only guess. Say "raise information density one notch, cut visual noise" and it knows exactly what to change. This lesson gives you twelve ready-to-use taste words, a set of eight variables that unpack every visual difference, plus a machine that translates complaints into terms.
Hand over "make it look better" and AI can only guess: maybe add a gradient, swap the font, pile on motion. Hand over "raise information density one notch, cut visual noise" and AI knows what to move: add two more data rows, cut half the badges. Vocabulary is the container for judgment: once you can hold the word "visual noise," you can keep the gut feeling that "something on this page is off."
How much useful information fits per unit area. Low density wastes the reader's screen; high density without hierarchy is what feels cramped.
Decoration that carries no information. Badges, corner tags, dividers, extra colors — all noise.
The gaps between content and edges, and between content blocks. Gaps are design too — squeeze them out and content fights.
Who matters most, who stands out. Size, weight, and color are the three levers — lift only one hero at a time.
How hard an element grabs attention — size, value, and solidity. Save the heavy slots for the primary action.
Related things sit close; unrelated ones sit apart. Distance itself carries grouping.
How far text pulls away from the background. Elegant gray and unreadable gray sit on opposite sides of a readability line.
Edges land on the same invisible lines. Alignment is free order.
A color splits into three knobs: hue (H) for which color, saturation (S) for how vivid, value (V) for how dark. About Face 4 asks designers to think in knobs — same when you tune color with AI. Speak knob by knob; don't just complain "the color looks bad."
Visual attributes whose values naturally rank. Size, value, and position are ordered — good for hierarchy, quantity, sequence. Hue and shape are unordered — only for categories. From Bertin's Semiology of Graphics; About Face 4 keeps the same judgment.
The "how do you use me" signal in an element's look. Raised edges, shadows, texture say clickable or draggable; spam the signal and readers poke things that don't move. About Face 4 notes texture rarely serves contrast — its real job is affordance.
Squint at the screen: what still pops, what blurs into mush, what clumps into groups. About Face 4's hierarchy checkup — five seconds, do it before you ship.
The words above cover how to critique; these variables cover how to change. Bertin's Semiology of Graphics breaks visual encoding into eight variables; About Face 4 keeps the list: shape, size, value, hue, saturation, orientation, texture, position. Every "looks different" on a UI bottoms out at these eight knobs. Same row of tiles — twist a different variable, tell a different story.
A dashboard needs five risk tiers, readable low-to-high at a glance. Which variable do you twist?
About Face 4 has a ballast rule: use visual attributes to show what something is; use text to say which one it is. An icon can say "this is a document" and stops there — which one is the contract needs the filename. Each does its own job; neither replaces the other.
Clients and bosses won't say the terms, but every complaint points somewhere. Hear the variable behind the complaint, and you know where to change. Start with four classics.
Eight words reshaped into AI-ready lines — each pastes straight into a prompt. Copy one, keep it, pick from it next time you revise a UI.
Your boss holds up the page: "It has no premium feel." Per this lesson, what do you check first?
"Looks good" is a wish; terms are commands: name information density and visual noise, and AI knows where to change.
Every complaint can become a variable: "messy" is visual noise over the line; "looks cheap" is color over budget — translate first, then fix right.
Eight variables, eight jobs: hierarchy and quantity use ordered variables (size, value); categories use hue; shape says "what it is," texture says "can I press it."
Next time you ask AI to revise a UI, pick one word from the cheat sheet into the prompt, compare it with "make it look better," and feel the gap.
Source: Original to Xiaoshan Academy's Taste Engineering series; some principles adapted from About Face 4: The Essentials of Interaction Design, Chapter 17.