Information hierarchy in design

Recently I needed to create a design with multiple levels of hierarchy.

I thought I’d solved levels 1-4. But realized that level 2 was getting lost in the mix. One solution could be to add more emphasis to the titles in level 2.

But that’d just make everything noisier. So I tried to find another solution, and stumbled on a tab interface.

That allowed me to move level 1 into tabs, and move emphasis from level 2 down to level 3.

Sometimes just rethinking the problem will help make the design simpler.