In a recent post, Seth Godin talks about the importance of seams. He mentions that seams help us get a grip and that we should worry about putting them in places that are useful.

I agree with this, but I think there’s more to it.

I believe that seams in things, from user experiences to polo shirts, help us understand and comprehend better by breaking things down into pieces. It’s human nature to want to find where one things stops and another begins, so when something is completely seamless, it makes us uneasy.

Really what people want to be free of is snags, not seams. Snags are problems, seams are just transitions. And while I agree with Seth that we should put seams where they’re useful, We should also do our best to make them easy to identify and understand.