Something I realized while watching the choreography of Dawn Dippel and Revolve dance company last night: The hallmark of good design/composition is that everything is a unified, coherent whole. If your thing is composed of multiple elements, those elements add up to a unified, coherent whole. If you decompose those to their elements and look at just one piece, that piece by itself should also be a unified, coherent whole.
You can see this in good choreography. You can hear this in well composed music. You can see this in well designed software. The thing makes sense as a whole. The pieces make sense of themselves.
Why this is so is also easy to see. It comes from the way the human mind organizes information. We "chunk" information at varying levels of detail and granularity. If your application makes sense, it needs to make sense at varying levels of detail and granularity as well.
You can see this in good choreography. You can hear this in well composed music. You can see this in well designed software. The thing makes sense as a whole. The pieces make sense of themselves.
Why this is so is also easy to see. It comes from the way the human mind organizes information. We "chunk" information at varying levels of detail and granularity. If your application makes sense, it needs to make sense at varying levels of detail and granularity as well.