Reduce visual intensity in designs that are too bold, aggressive, or overstimulating, creating a more refined and approachable aesthetic without losing effectiveness.
MANDATORY PREPARATION
Context Gathering (Do This First)
You cannot do a great job without having necessary context, such as target audience (critical), desired use-cases (critical), brand personality/tone, and everything else that a great human designer would need as well.
Attempt to gather these from the current thread or codebase.
- If you don't find exact information and have to infer from existing design and functionality, you MUST STOP and STOP and call the AskUserQuestionTool to clarify. whether you got it right.
- Otherwise, if you can't fully infer or your level of confidence is medium or lower, you MUST STOP and call the AskUserQuestionTool to clarify. clarifying questions first to complete your context.
Do NOT proceed until you have answers. Guessing leads to generic design.
Use ux skill
Use the ux skill for design principles and anti-patterns. Do NOT proceed until it has executed and you know all DO's and DON'Ts.
Assess Current State
Analyze what makes the design feel too intense:
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Identify intensity sources:
- Color saturation: Overly bright or saturated colors
- Contrast extremes: Too much high-contrast juxtaposition
- Visual weight: Too many bold, heavy elements competing
- Animation excess: Too much motion or overly dramatic effects
- Complexity: Too many visual elements, patterns, or decorations
- Scale: Everything is large and loud with no hierarchy
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Understand the context:
- What's the purpose? (Marketing vs tool vs reading experience)
- Who's the audience? (Some contexts need energy)
- What's working? (Don't throw away good ideas)
- What's the core message? (Preserve what matters)
If any of these are unclear from the codebase, STOP and call the AskUserQuestionTool to clarify.
CRITICAL: "Quieter" doesn't mean boring or generic. It means refined, sophisticated, and easier on the eyes. Think luxury, not laziness.
Plan Refinement
Create a strategy to reduce intensity while maintaining impact:
- Color approach: Desaturate or shift to more sophisticated tones?
- Hierarchy approach: Which elements should stay bold (very few), which should recede?
- Simplification approach: What can be removed entirely?
- Sophistication approach: How can we signal quality through restraint?
IMPORTANT: Great quiet design is harder than great bold design. Subtlety requires precision.
Refine the Design
Systematically reduce intensity across these dimensions:
Color Refinement
- Reduce saturation: Shift from fully saturated to 70-85% saturation
- Soften palette: Replace bright colors with muted, sophisticated tones
- Reduce color variety: Use fewer colors more thoughtfully
- Neutral dominance: Let neutrals do more work, use color as accent (10% rule)
- Gentler contrasts: High contrast only where it matters most
- Tinted grays: Use warm or cool tinted grays instead of pure gray—adds sophistication without loudness
- Never gray on color: If you have gray text on a colored background, use a darker shade of that color or transparency instead
Visual Weight Reduction
- Typography: Reduce font weights (900 → 600, 700 → 500), decrease sizes where appropriate
- Hierarchy through subtlety: Use weight, size, and space instead of color and boldness
- White space: Increase breathing room, reduce density
- Borders & lines: Reduce thickness, decrease opacity, or remove entirely
Simplification
- Remove decorative elements: Gradients, shadows, patterns, textures that don't serve purpose
- Simplify shapes: Reduce border radius extremes, simplify custom shapes
- Reduce layering: Flatten visual hierarchy where possible
- Clean up effects: Reduce or remove blur effects, glows, multiple shadows
Motion Reduction
- Reduce animation intensity: Shorter distances (10-20px instead of 40px), gentler easing
- Remove decorative animations: Keep functional motion, remove flourishes
- Subtle micro-interactions: Replace dramatic effects with gentle feedback
- Refined easing: Use ease-out-quart for smooth, understated motion—never bounce or elastic
- Remove animations entirely if they're not serving a clear purpose
Composition Refinement
- Reduce scale jumps: Smaller contrast between sizes creates calmer feeling
- Align to grid: Bring rogue elements back into systematic alignment
- Even out spacing: Replace extreme spacing variations with consistent rhythm
NEVER:
- Make everything the same size/weight (hierarchy still matters)
- Remove all color (quiet ≠ grayscale)
- Eliminate all personality (maintain character through refinement)
- Sacrifice usability for aesthetics (functional elements still need clear affordances)
- Make everything small and light (some anchors needed)
Verify Quality
Ensure refinement maintains quality:
- Still functional: Can users still accomplish tasks easily?
- Still distinctive: Does it have character, or is it generic now?
- Better reading: Is text easier to read for extended periods?
- Sophistication: Does it feel more refined and premium?
Remember: Quiet design is confident design. It doesn't need to shout. Less is more, but less is also harder. Refine with precision and maintain intentionality.