Commercial success plus bad design does NOT equal good design
I love following a good debate, and here's one that's been raging for some time now. Follow if through if you haven't already and have an hour (no, really) to spare, because it includes some insightful commentary from some of the web's most experienced and influential designers. Albeit among the mud slinging that's generally par for the course when it comes to something as subjective as design.
It began in late January, quite some time before I'd initially thought when I started this post. From my digging around, the accomplished Andy Rutledge appears to have started and finished the debate (in my opinion) before it even began, with just 10 words:
Commercial success plus bad design does NOT equal good design.
His insightful article was mirrored on UX Magazine by invite in early February, and has to date received just short of 100 comments.
A month later, Robert Scoble - self-professed 'designer of ugly' - blogged The role of anti-marketing design, not in response to Andy's article, but this is where it starts to heat up.
The hilarious Greg Storey stepped forward with his defence, which is where I started reading having previously skipped over links to Scoble's post in a few feeds. Scoble responds among the 88 comments, something about font size. Which is bizarre since their font sizes differ by 1px, but anyway. What's a little more mud worth when you're already sinking?
A little Googling revealed Josh Lehman's nice overview of the debate up to this point, in The Ugly Conversation which contains a few more links. It's now late March.
Today I stumbled onto Ugly Design Works... Most Web Designers Miss the Point by startup GoJobby's Tony Wright - err, "a veteran geek with many years of experience leading, designing, and building rich internet applications". He cited Greg's post, using it as a base for his argument, ending with the following tripe:
So, I guess my point is that all of you web designers who (like Greg) feel that good design is effective communication need to put your money where your mouth is... And make your sites a little bit more usable and, yes, a little bit uglier.
When I read his post dated 17 April this afternoon, comments were still closed/moderated. The post received a lot of attention after appearing on Digg...
...submitted by Tony himself, as Greg points out when he rejoins the debate today with Wrong, in which he responds:
In his post, Ugly Design Works... Most Web Designers Miss the Point, Tony goes on and on about my inability to recognize that design is nothing more than pretty art and that web designers in general are in denial about the more important role of the usability expert.
Tony was the first to respond, opening comments on his post, and the flame war ensued.
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11 Comments
fookin hull mate, this debate has got me thinking I’m going to produce digiguru with fook’al graphics, fook’al css & dear I say it, fook’al flash. nort a fookin chance mate.
Make it function well, dress it up … just not like a hooker!
Personally, I think design on the web is simply about creating context for content, by creating an atmosphere for it to live in.
I agree that designers and usability experts need to chill a bit about each other’s skills though – both are crucial. Funny how an argument ends up spiraling out of control as soon as there’s personal criticism involved. Haha!
Just on the side: Damien, I think your style’s always been pretty 2.0, simply because what I’ve seen of it’s always been really simple (which almost by default makes it more usable).
ye, I spent some time bouncing around the various links having a read, very interesting! Thanks for the links Damien!
My thoughts (i will make them short, this time).
Hey remember back ‘n the day of Web 1.0, when tables allowed layout and the ‘web developers’ were out-shined by web designers? Well I think it’s coming back to the designers,,, the day designers get with grips of CSS, XHTML, the web will be designed by them again,,, fingers crossed for that day.
I think in the past 6 months; i spent more of my web time NOT looking at design, but web technology, most sites are not well designed, read pretty, I’d choose ‘pretty’ over functional, I choose experimental over ‘functional’, I choose motion over ‘accomodating a broader user base’,,,
I miss design is kinky, k101, lounge72,,, most importanly i miss dplanet:: and alt.sense. Truth be told alt.sense was probebly (in the african/south african) context the first web 2.0-collective-authentic-media thingy.
I think I am rambling.
Aluta Continua.
On Greg’s first post on the matter, he receives this comment:
“LOVE the post title by the way. You’d have to be a super nerd to get it, and I’m totally a super nerd.”
I’m probably gonna regret acknowledging my ignorance on this one (or maybe not considering the super nerd thing), but I’m slightly (very) baffled as to what the subtlety/meaning is of the title ‘ATDT’ is… :-|
An update for those following: Jason Santa Maria on what Jon Hicks ‘hopes is the last word on all the “ugly beats design†bollocks‘…
Michelle: thanks for those links.. I also have no idea about ‘ATDT’, even after spending the time to find out. ;)
lebogang: aah altsense, yeah miss that community too! I spent way too much time there rambling on about the benefits of css layouts, lol..
Mr Zeldman has shared his thoughts as well:
I don’t understand the siren song of this demonstrably idiotic claim. I don’t know why it seduces a new crop of assh*les each year. I only know it does. And then, just as predictably, all the year’s hot young new media designers get in a huff defending design against the fools who attacked it.
that was good reading, thanks. i just hope that people also remember that good design is not the only goal.
I know this is an old post, but I just had to weigh in with my 2 cents…
Apart from being utterly pointless, these absurd debates about who’s more important just further widen the divide between us when we should be looking at ways to work together. Compromise never killed anyone! No site is ever going to be 100% usable or absolutely drop-dead stunning – it’s just not possible. Since tradeoffs have to made, we should try to focus on what the end-users need and want and forget about defending our turf.
I’m a usability analyst at Usable Planet so I admit I am biased towards usability, but even I know that sometimes usability sacrifices have to be made in the inerests of security or visual appeal. I think Jakob Nielsen’s useit.com does usability a great disservice by creating the impression that usability is ugly. Usability and appealing design are far from mutually exclusive.
*Sigh* Why can’t we all just get along?! :-)
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29 April 2006
coda01:17 am
I should add that I find this debate interesting because it represents the current state of thinking and trends in online design (aka Web 2.0), and in some ways how I perceive the development of my own design style among these trends.