The Jazz in UX: Designing for Improvisation, not Perfection

Jazz music was created and first seen in the US, a long time ago. It was made by immigrants from multiples different countries that wanted to communicate to each other, but simply couldn't due to language disparities.

They used to get into tiny rooms, play known themes from their times and embark on individual improvised solos, which were accompanied and interacted with other musicians. In other words, Jazz was a matter of speech, expression and conversation, where through musical notes, people could advocate against each other, support, agree and collaborate to make a point. Exactly like a conversation. It was a place of flowing freedom and pure creativity, in fact, something new every day.

Mostly like jazz, our daily routine nowadays consists of improvised actions within many different constraints of modern society. Therefore, most interactions aren’t exactly linear and structured, but random and sometimes nonsense. Which is particularly troublesome to designers trying to create pixel perfect flows and experiences, while in reality user flow is a bit chaotic. So, what can we learn from jazz music that could help UX Designers?

Structure creates Freedom and Flexibility

Most jazz tunes are improvisations over a well-known music theme, and usually structured as such: Play the theme melody, improvise over the theme's chord progressions (and go beyond if desired), and then at the end of the tune it plays the theme melody again. This structure allows musicians to have a base to start with and make their freedom, flexibility and creativity flourish. It facilitates interactions, as it creates a subject to talk about.

UX Design can work in exactly the same way. By creating an initial and flexible structure, it allows users to fully embrace their own individual journey and need. For easier understanding, an example might help: Figma have auto-layout and layer grid features that create a minimal and useful structure to a design, while also allowing for free and flexible element positioning in the canvas.

This can also be seen when utilizing templates in different apps (such as Notion, FigJam, Miro and many others). The templates are just a starting point for users to get where they want to go.

Anticipating Deviations

Every conversation is quite unique. A person may have a conversation with the same person many times, have completely different ways of expressing their point of views, and end up on the same page. Jazz it is exactly like that, musicians never play exactly the same melody, solo, chords and so on. Even though it is the same tune, they circle around and cut through steps, but eventually end the tune in a satisfactory manner.

To assume that users will always follow the happy path, it is to assume a jazz musician will play a solo exactly the same all the times. The reality is that user flows are quite messy as users go to different pages, click on random elements and even go out of the website for a period of time. As a matter of fact, it is a very interesting to check out user behavior tracking applications such as Clarity, and visualize how users actually behave. With that in mind, good UX Design anticipates that users will commit mistakes, errors, detours and go through alternative flows.

Airbnb is great at that, where they create enough flexibility in a quite chaotic process of organizing a trip. Airbnb app has a feature option of “I'm flexible” that states that the user is flexible in their stay and duration. That can be used with flexibility on specific days up to months.

While also reminding users of past searches and places they interacted with, in case they still want to plan that trip. In addition to that, the user can browse locations either through the list/grid or the interactive map, allowing them to fully embrace their own individual journey and explore freely.

Call and Response

In music, there is a very famous concept called “call and response”, just as in a discussion, where a melody, a solo or any musical gesture is complemented by another member of the band, generating a complete message. Call and response is vital for jazz music to be interesting, in fact, is one of the pillars of basic music interaction and conversation.

In the same way, properly crafted UX Design is conversational, responsive and fit to the user. A great product reacts to all kinds of user inputs and respond accordingly to match their need. For instance, users listen to their beloved artists in Spotify and Spotify, based on the user's behavior pattern, suggests songs, albums, artists and playlists. Just like a piano player suggesting a new idea on a saxophone player solo, the user and saxophone player may or may not like the suggestion made. They may or may not explore this new direction, making this into a new response to the system and piano player.

Consequently, Spotify and piano player now might suggest another idea and direction to their journey, based on the most recent response. Or complement even more the initial proposed idea. It seems simple, but it is a very nuanced and vital part of successful digital products.

Conclusion

There are many parallels to be drawn between Jazz and UX Design. With such rich and creative art form, it is possible to gather essential insights that might seem obvious, but that need to be reminded of and taken into consideration in a designer's daily life. In fact, it proposes that Designers constantly hear and observe the users in their true nature, in order to empathize with them and create the best possible solution.

Amid the chaos of 2025 world, a Jazz-like mindset might be just the right approach to all current problems.