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Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web in 1989, shares my opinion on design versus usability:
Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don’t care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.
I don’t want web 2.0 sites that look pretty but are terrible to use. Keep your sites simple, with not too many links and content per page. If a commercial website is easy to use, that is the first step towards successfully converting visitors into buyers. Same concept that helped Google become popular so fast.
Time’s A Changin’…
As a professional in the industry, I think Tim was dead on back in 1989. Now in 2008, he still stands correct, well sorta…
These days, we keep seeing more and more brands pushing creativity and good design that it’s become mainstream. Everyday-people (non-designers) are learning how to tell the difference between an “ok” site, a well designed site and a site that is just over-the-top. This doesn’t just apply to websites — the same goes for movies, commercials and print. People are starting to put a value on design.
Have your Cake and Eat it Too…
A well designed site does not have to sacrifice good usability. Anyone who’s practicing this profession knows that in today’s market, if you can’t deliver both, you’re pretty much dead to your competition. Even the most complex sites with thousands of pages deep can look and perform well if thought through properly.
It’s a combination of good visual, copy, usability and site architecture that will determine how successful a site can be. ONE OF THE REASON WHY I STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT PARKED PAGES DO NOT PERFORM WELL IS BECAUSE THEY DON’T ADDRESS ALL FOUR CRITERIA.
And then there was GOOGLE…
Despite what you might think, GOOGLE does care about design. Everything from their seasonally changing logo, to their typography and overall clean structure, GOOGLE has done a great job standing out and ahead of the portal crowd. The only other site that I think is successful despite the look and feel is Craig’s List – but why fix what’s not broken?
-PB
**ANSWER**
I agree with everything you’re saying, PB. I didn’t say a well-designed site had to sacrifice usability. In fact, design and usability can go hand in hand. But it’s important that usability always comes first. And yes, Google cares about design. The point I was trying to make, is that the simplistic layout of their site let them stick out of the other search engines and portals. Google’s minimalist site design has been like a message to their users, saying that they want to deliver good results instead of hiding a bad service behind a better design.