Beauty has obsessed humanity since our earlier times.

It crosses all boundaries; societal, cultural, religious… it even goes beyond the medium and the craft. It is a constant argument between philosophers, artists and scientists that beauty can or cannot be clarified. But curiously; all human beings are experiencing the feeling of beauty (or the lack of it) every day.
A stunning flower growing in the middle of a concrete sidewalk, the look of a fierce cloud amidst a tempest or a charming smile given by a stranger on our way to work.

We, numerous times a day, experience beauty with more or less attention.

Beauty belongs to the being and not to the having, the real beauty cannot be defined as a medium or instrument. By nature, it is a way of being, an existential state. — Francois Cheng

It is easier to spot beauty in some contexts than others, like in an outfit or a car, but rather difficult when it’s about something abstract such as a melody.

Thus, how are we supposed to define what’s beautiful in an intangible digital product experienced through a physical device?

Indeed, to experience a digital product we need something between them and us. This will impact our feeling; using an app via the very first iPhone compared to the latest one will provide a widely different experience.
So, is beauty defined by a combination of the device and the digital product or shall we judge the experience through the most optimal device?

Then again, it brings the question of what’s the optimum condition? Is it the best device that could run the digital product at the moment of its creation? Or, the best device available at this very moment?

I do not believe that we can find a correct answer to those questions, take for example the cinema industry.
Directors are creating movies by using many devices: lights, computers, lenses, rolls, cameras…
Then comes the post-production where the footage will go through many processes to be edited and saved on storage materials (films, DVDs, online servers..).
Ultimately, this movie will be displayed on diverse devices (TVs, cinema screens, monitors, phones..).
The sheer scale of this process makes it impossible to judge a movie as a unique experience.

This is why it is incredibly tedious to spot beauty while being restricted by defined filters in a complex medium such as the digital world.

We could reverse-engine the process by selecting digital products identified as beautiful by several individuals. In the end, we would have to classify those findings and the same problem would emerge. Some people will enjoy a clean and accessible website that shows beauty by being straightforward. Others will focus on aesthetically pleasing websites that put aside any actual purpose.

None of those criteria are right or wrong, since beauty acts on many levels in a digital product it is even harder to find a universal definition.

Beauty? To me it’s a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to. — Pablo Picasso