I have a love/hate relationship with the word “coherent”. I find that it is a word that is more impactful when we use its opposite form. When we say something like, “incoherent with pain“, or “incoherent with grief“, for example, it paints a picture of someone struggling to say something intelligible, meaningful. Or when we say “his instructions are incoherent“, it gives the feeling of messiness, confusion.
Logic then should follow that the word coherent would describe something legible and meaningful. But it’s not as simple as that.
A quick search for the definition of coherence brings the following result: “Coherence refers to the logical, consistent, and orderly connection of parts so that they form a unified whole. Whether applied to writing, physics, or everyday reasoning, it describes a state where components logically ‘stick together’ and make sense.”
The word “coherent” is derived from the Latin word cohaerere, which means “to stick together”. The idea is that when something fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, it is coherent. It is complete. It is logical.
Well, I applied that concept recently to UX/UI systems design.
When I was thirteen, young and often bored, my dad installed a 3-month trial version of Paint Shop Pro onto my desktop. He said if I had time to be bored, I might as well teach myself the software… so I did, and boy did it lead me down a pure rabbit hole of graphics design software for the months (and years) that followed. I would download endless software and teach myself how to use them until the trial expires, forcing me to pivot to something else.
Trial after trial, I experimented with one software after another.
I dabbled with GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), Corel Video Studio, Sony Vegas Video Studio, Ulead GIF Animator, and Macromedia Fireworks. I quickly learned that design software use the same language through similar icons. The pan tool. Zoom tool. Crop. Eyedropper. Magic wand. Selection tool. These became a common language that quickly taught me how to use one software after another. When I eventually discovered Adobe Photoshop (and the entire line of Adobe products), at the age of fourteen, I quickly learned how to get the free (pirated) version from Torrent and the rest was history.
With the power of Adobe Photoshop, I began designing profiles online forum users, pairing my designs with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and basic HTML to create really pretty functional HTML profile pages. I never had formal training, but through tutorials, trial and error, studying the work of others, and a bit of logic, I learned where to put buttons, what colours they should (and should not) be, how to create a colour palette, and the joy of installing specialised, custom fonts and how typography plays into overall design.
I had no idea that what I had began to play with, essentially, was UX/UI – User Experience and User Interface. And I did not have the awareness at the time, that making sure everything fit together was coherence in action.
Last week, I challenged myself to learn Google Apps Script (with the help of generative AI), and I found myself amazed with how quickly I could find myself in “the zone”. Hours passed by without my noticing. It took me three days to build the app, and in total, I deployed the web app around 230 times until I was finally, finally satisfied with it.
The function of the app was simple enough. People log in, they select one out of around 90+ options, fill in a form, and submit it. The system is there to make it easy for them to select the option related to them and record their answers in a Google Sheet.
So why did it take 230 deployments to develop that app?
If I look back at my queries, most of it related to proper UI design:
- There needs to be a button. The button should be blue. When someone clicks on the button, there should be a small “Updating…” feedback, in a slightly darker shade, as the system processes it.
- There should be a star in this box or that, to indicate whenever a submission has been selected by the admin.
- There should be a leaderboard, with a chart showing which parties have contributed to the system, and which have yet to do so.
- When someone opens the app for the first time, it needs to be personalized. Their name should appear, with their position, to give it a personal touch.
- There should be a favicon, so that when someone bookmarks the app, the institution logo is there.
- There should be several filter options, depending on what someone might search for. When they open an entry, the reference should be there, so they know what they are looking at without needing to switch between two tabs or look at a separate document.
- And so on.
Some people might ask, did I really need to optimize for such User Experience, for such a simple, internal app? I mean, 230 deployments in 3 days is a lot of minute, miniscule editing, for something as simple as changing a button colour or adding a purple line on top of a summary box. The perfectionist in me would not let me rest until I was satisfied with every inch of that app’s interface. Each colour had to match. Blue could not just be blue. Blue had to be the exact #000D6B hex code across all accents. Fonts could not just be serif or sans serif. It had to be the Inter font across the entire system.
But that, dear readers, is the price of coherence.
Coherence refers to the logical, consistent, and orderly connection of parts so that they form a unified whole
Look at those words. Logical. Consistent. Orderly.
I suppose my slight love-hate relationship with the word “coherence” comes from the understanding of what it entails. It is not easy to achieve coherence. A person who is coherent (in verbal or written communication) is a person who knows how to communicate well, through their choice of words, the way they structure sentences, and how they present their arguments. We can follow their logic and thought process, follow through what they are describing, and understand that a joke is a joke. In fact, even if we look at the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) document, the word “coherent” or “coherence” is only used for B2, C1 and C2 language users, referring to those who are at upper intermediate to near native fluency levels.
There is a reason for this.
Coherence is achieved with a certain level of fluency. Be it fluency in language, you can only achieve coherence through fluency. You know you are coherent when there is a reduction in mental effort to understand what you are communicating. There is no confusion. There are smooth transitions. Coherence is smooth, effortless. It flows. You may not consciously notice coherence when it is there, but you definitely notice when it isn’t, when something is incoherent.
I find good UX/UI design to be a beautiful symbol of coherence—of pieces fitting together like they were meant to be, as how they were designed to be.
Learning UX/UI design is like learning how to be fluent in a language, which leads to a noticable difference between an interface that is coherent and incoherent. You learn the psychology of colours, tone and colour grading, and decide the palette you want to use. You learn appropriate image choice. Font choice. You learn the difference between using “Enter” as opposed to “Proceed” or “Next” or “Log In” and what reactions these words can evoke, psychologically. You understand that proper UX/UI design is branding. It is evoking a certain experience through the interface, where a developer and systems designer is communicating through buttons and colours and fonts and layouts and graphics—an experience made pleasurable just because of how coherent everything is.
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