Ruminations on Design

Design is one of those things I never really "got" until recently, and I still have a tough time wrapping my head around all of its implications. I remember a cover story on design in Newsweek from a while back, but the only thing I really noted from it was an illustration of what a well designed home would look like, contrasted with the typical unit which was designed with the sole purpose of filling a block with as many as possible. Needless to say, the two looked nothing alike.

That said, design is one of those things that you encounter all the time, from the timing of the stoplights to the horrid navigation system on Comcast's DVRs. Good design is rarely noted, but bad design almost always is. And little annoys me more than bad design.

Several of the articles for next week do a great job of underscoring the importance of good design on the web. As Jakob Nielsen succinctly puts it, "If a website is difficult to use, people leave." Reading through both Nielsen's Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design and Vincent Flander's similar list, it amazes me how some major websites make basic usability mistakes that were no doubt first identified years ago.

Now, granted, I hadn't specifically put my finger on the problem of, say, mystery meat navigation, but after reading the description I can recall being frustrated by such a navigation system in the past, and I'll definitely notice it right away in the future.

I'm sure some designers see the trade off between usability and the look of a site as a zero sum game, but a good looking site will be worthless if you can't get around it. Perhaps many of the bad sites I've seen aren't exactly designed by pros, or the resources simply weren't there. Of course, many political websites don't exactly have a lot of money behind them, so I'm sure this is a problem area where they are overrepresented with wasteful results. Definitely something to look for...