It Isn’t About Ugly Design,
It’s About Functional Design
There’s been talk all over the interweb about whether ugly design is successful design, generally discussed in the context of sites like craigslist.
This discussion has for the most part been misguided though. When I’m talking about design, I find it helpful to break the discussion into functional, process and aesthetic categories and I deal with them in that order.
- What’s the functionality I’m trying to offer?
- What process is needed in order to allow the user to use that functionality?
- Lastly, what aesthetic choices would best serve both function and process?
You can answer questions of functionality and process and never make any choices on question three and still have a phenomenally successful project, but if you have the time and awareness for smart aesthetic choices, your customers will be better served.
It isn’t about ugly design. It’s about functional design and functional design doesn’t have to be ugly. In fact, when most people are talking about ugly design, they’re really talking about spare design (i.e. craigslist.) Craigslist could be prettier and just as useful and even more usable, but given Craigslist’s large user base, design changes at this point in it’s life should be made with great care.
I’m a big fan of a healthy aesthetic sensibility when it comes to creating software, but lead with function, understand completion and then think about aesthetic design as an aide to the first two.
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Comments (2)
I like to refer to it as intuitive design when both function and aesthetics meld well. As you know I have been a QA guy for nearly 10 years now and many of the GUIs I’ve seen were neither functional nor aeshetically pleasing.
I agree wholeheartedly that the functionality part of design is the more important of the two but to understand how your users use the given application goes a great ways into how it might be both functional and eye catching. Typically in a software development process the aesthetics should be left towards the end of the process in a “fit and finish” or “polish the apple (no pun intended)” phase.
Unfortunately in many organizations the polishing starts at the beginning at the detriment of functionality, essentially polishing a turd.
Just my 2 cents.
I found your site via Flair research.
Many years ago I read, “The Psychology of Everyday Things”, by Donald Norman, aside from the ego writing it had a lot to say to me as a layman. This was physical objects but the basic rules remain the same.
Aesthetics must serve functionality. I don’t want to have to guess where the link is. Some of the new, spare sites I see are crap. I visited an architectural firms clean but pretty site and couldn’t find my way around.
My former brother-in-law was a lead designer/liaison with Stanford Medical Center during his early days as an executive with a software firm. He was talking to my mom about the project and she asked him if they had talked to any nurses or medical clerks about the project, she had spent more than twenty years in the medical insurance and medical assisting field. He said they were dealing with a committee of doctors and executives. She suggested they talk to the people who would be actually using the program, he followed her suggestion and was shocked at how wrong they had gotten the preliminary design.
A web site may be the first impression for you or your business or your client’s business. Screw that up and you effect how I feel about how I feel about your client. I am stunned, (maybe I shouldn’t be), when I see the most basic errors such as grammar and spelling or a site that isn’t being updated regularly. This is both a design and a people problem.
Blah, blah, blah, I am preaching to the choir. CL works, I would like added functionality such as searching within results but I don’t give the proverbial rat’s ass what it looks like. If CL was a retail site then the visual look would be more important as the psychology of selling becomes a factor. I may not care what that site might look like but most do. The CL customer is there to sell/buy/rent/job/booty hunt, she/he doesn’t need or doesn’t even see the design.
I am running on. A bad design move.
Good blog, good writing.
gabh an latha,
Richard Dietzel
Eugene, OR