Friday, December 9, 2016

website design - Why are login forms centered?


Why are login forms always centered on the screen? Most horizontally, some vertically also. Sites like Apple/Amazon/Adobe/Microsoft/Google/PayPal/Instagram/Twitter etc. are all centered! Is this an undocumented best practice everyone unanimously decided to use?


mockup


download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups


Obviously it's most aesthetically pleasing, but is there any other reasons why?



Edit: Many of these sites do not support mobile either, so it wasn't done specifically for that.



Answer



There are actually quite a few other benefits to this approach, I'll just rattle off a few.


Ergonomics.


An often overlooked part of UI design, because we think of digital as not being (as) limited by the human body. But what's more comfortable, looking straight forward, or looking to either the left or the right? On phones, the middle of the screen is also considerably easier to reach than a side.




Focus


You want people to login, to look at your site. Centering the login creates as much buffer space as possible between the element you want used, and the world outside of the screen.




Consistency with other sites



Other sites do it, so you'll fit in nicely. While following the beaten path is not always the best option, in UX it can be good because it lowers the learning curve. This design is very archetypal, and people will instantly recognize the goal of the page and what to do next.




Consistency within variations


You can use the exact same layout for LTR and RTL text. You can load it on a phone or a PC and it will feel like the same layout. Equal whitespace fades into the periphery, but whitespace (or absence of it) on only one side makes a small or large site feel very different: enter image description here


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