Website Aesthetics
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
I think usability matters more than aesthetics.
Think about it: when you look at something, if it's good-looking then it's also quite usable. My old boss used to say that if something is beautiful, then not only it works, but it's also usable. Of course, that's a bit too simplistic, but yet again if something is aesthetically-pleasing, then your brain is probably more inclined to understand how it works.
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Continuous Localization and My Startup
Completely agree. When you have a site that tries to be too "interfacey" it Really puts me off. You know the site, someone spent days on a flash animation and graphics to display a total of maybe 15 strings en sum. which could have been done effectively in a good home page. granted there needs to be some visual aspect which brands the site, or subdomain (blogosphere), but just because it makes the site memorable doesn't make it easy to use... Look at the content that is displayed in the examples, .. go ahead open each up and see what the are Do-ing with their website and then ask yourself which one feel like it would be a better resource/ knowledge repository...? (turns out for me it is the reverse order then for the OP).. :laugh:
I'd blame it on the Brain farts.. But let's be honest, it really is more like a Methane factory between my ears some days then it is anything else... -"The conversations he was having with himself were becoming ominous."-.. On the radio...
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Looking only at the front pages, I found the first two equally OK. I do not like the bright shiney style used by the third; the message I get from it is "all beauty, not brains".
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
Click around those sites.. your impressions are confirmed ;P
I'd blame it on the Brain farts.. But let's be honest, it really is more like a Methane factory between my ears some days then it is anything else... -"The conversations he was having with himself were becoming ominous."-.. On the radio...
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When browsing the Internet, perhaps looking for something specific, I have found myself often landing on poorly-built pages. Mind you, poorly-built only from an aesthetics point of view. My immediate reaction is to simply go away and look for something else. I don't even spend a minute actually reading the website to see if it fits my needs. Perhaps this kind of behavior derives from being in charge of our website (and everything else) at my company (and also being a chronic nit-picker), but I believe that if you can't spend some time working on your website to make it somewhat good-looking, then you don't deserve my time. Your users/customers deserve usability and even some eyecandy. If you don't agree, then you don't deserve your users. Of course, there are exceptions (like CP), and cases when you simply can't avoid using a bad-looking website, but the feeling is still there. The same applies to desktop and mobile apps. Ugly UI -> I run away immediately. An example of an ugly website: http://www2.multilizer.com/[^] An example of a not-so-ugly website: http://www.hosted-projects.com/[^] An example of beautiful website: http://www.codebasehq.com/[^] (I'm not affiliated with any of the three) Am I completely crazy or is it the same for everyone else?
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Continuous Localization and My Startup
This is a site for developers, so naturally we prefer functionality over aesthetics. But, I don't agree that a fancy look is just a 'waste of bandwidth' as one person said. It depends on your audience. Most web design is not for developers, but for the average public who do like a fancy look. As others have said, the problem is that people have different tastes. What looks nice to one, doesn't necessarily look nice to another. For example:
Dario Solera wrote:
An example of an ugly website: http://www2.multilizer.com/\[^\]
Yes, I agree, it's ugly but...
Dario Solera wrote:
An example of a not-so-ugly website: http://www.hosted-projects.com/\[^\]
To me this one was horrible! The ugliest one of the three.
Dario Solera wrote:
An example of beautiful website: http://www.codebasehq.com/\[^\]
I've been to a lot of the 'free website template' sites, and this looks almost identical to many of the designs I have seen there. It's not bad, but I wouldn't consider it 'beautiful', or that they put much more thought into it than modifying a freely available template. Even their 'Community' link is just a link to their Twitter page! How is that a 'Community'? Especially for people who don't use Twitter?! Of course, as a developer, I can't really talk, since I'm not a designer. But, I've found a lot of good resources on the Web which have helped. Particularly Smashing Magazine[^], which also has many links to other resources.
We live in a world operated by science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. --Carl Sagan
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When browsing the Internet, perhaps looking for something specific, I have found myself often landing on poorly-built pages. Mind you, poorly-built only from an aesthetics point of view. My immediate reaction is to simply go away and look for something else. I don't even spend a minute actually reading the website to see if it fits my needs. Perhaps this kind of behavior derives from being in charge of our website (and everything else) at my company (and also being a chronic nit-picker), but I believe that if you can't spend some time working on your website to make it somewhat good-looking, then you don't deserve my time. Your users/customers deserve usability and even some eyecandy. If you don't agree, then you don't deserve your users. Of course, there are exceptions (like CP), and cases when you simply can't avoid using a bad-looking website, but the feeling is still there. The same applies to desktop and mobile apps. Ugly UI -> I run away immediately. An example of an ugly website: http://www2.multilizer.com/[^] An example of a not-so-ugly website: http://www.hosted-projects.com/[^] An example of beautiful website: http://www.codebasehq.com/[^] (I'm not affiliated with any of the three) Am I completely crazy or is it the same for everyone else?
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Continuous Localization and My Startup
Maybe I'm just retarded design challenged, but I didn't see anything wrong with any of those sites. They looked pretty good compared to the site(s) I maintain. (I'm trying to change that). What usually chaps my @ss are the sites that go on about how wonderful their products are and forget to tell you what their products do. It seems they assume you already know. http://www.blender.org/ used to be a prime example. I see now they have mended their ways and shows how turned off I was by their older design that I haven't bothered to go back until now. Or sites that take you all the way through the checkout process before they tell you what the product will cost. I've abandoned many a cart and cussed the companies for wasting my time. In a sideways rant, it seems even journalists have forgotten the 5 W's and an H, so why should web designers even bother to communicate when visceral feel is all you need?
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11
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When browsing the Internet, perhaps looking for something specific, I have found myself often landing on poorly-built pages. Mind you, poorly-built only from an aesthetics point of view. My immediate reaction is to simply go away and look for something else. I don't even spend a minute actually reading the website to see if it fits my needs. Perhaps this kind of behavior derives from being in charge of our website (and everything else) at my company (and also being a chronic nit-picker), but I believe that if you can't spend some time working on your website to make it somewhat good-looking, then you don't deserve my time. Your users/customers deserve usability and even some eyecandy. If you don't agree, then you don't deserve your users. Of course, there are exceptions (like CP), and cases when you simply can't avoid using a bad-looking website, but the feeling is still there. The same applies to desktop and mobile apps. Ugly UI -> I run away immediately. An example of an ugly website: http://www2.multilizer.com/[^] An example of a not-so-ugly website: http://www.hosted-projects.com/[^] An example of beautiful website: http://www.codebasehq.com/[^] (I'm not affiliated with any of the three) Am I completely crazy or is it the same for everyone else?
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Continuous Localization and My Startup
I wouldn't necessarily say that an ugly website will make me leave right then and there. Especially if I need whatever content is on the website. However, a website that looks like a spammer site, a site with a lot of mistakes, or possibly a site that looks like it's infecting me by just being on it, those are the sites I X out as quickly as possible. And then run a quick scan just to make sure everything is still good. Thank [whoever is your higher power] for sandboxes. P.S. I dont have a huge problem with how CP looks. Its a forum/informational site, so aesthetics aren't a deal breaker. I do have to say a lot of the ads look like spam. It seems to happen on even the most legit sites, so I guess even CP isn't immune.
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When browsing the Internet, perhaps looking for something specific, I have found myself often landing on poorly-built pages. Mind you, poorly-built only from an aesthetics point of view. My immediate reaction is to simply go away and look for something else. I don't even spend a minute actually reading the website to see if it fits my needs. Perhaps this kind of behavior derives from being in charge of our website (and everything else) at my company (and also being a chronic nit-picker), but I believe that if you can't spend some time working on your website to make it somewhat good-looking, then you don't deserve my time. Your users/customers deserve usability and even some eyecandy. If you don't agree, then you don't deserve your users. Of course, there are exceptions (like CP), and cases when you simply can't avoid using a bad-looking website, but the feeling is still there. The same applies to desktop and mobile apps. Ugly UI -> I run away immediately. An example of an ugly website: http://www2.multilizer.com/[^] An example of a not-so-ugly website: http://www.hosted-projects.com/[^] An example of beautiful website: http://www.codebasehq.com/[^] (I'm not affiliated with any of the three) Am I completely crazy or is it the same for everyone else?
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Continuous Localization and My Startup
Hmmm, I thought you "not-so-ugly" site was considerably uglier than your "ugly" site. Guess that's the problem with aesthetics... it is not a universal determination. So you might reconsider your "you don't deserve my time" attitude, as it may not be a lack of care that causes you to find a website ugly. And I'd agree some of the other responses - usability is more important than looks - your "beautiful" website I found hard to navigate - whereas I had a pretty good idea of what your ugly site was all about right away.
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Looking only at the front pages, I found the first two equally OK. I do not like the bright shiney style used by the third; the message I get from it is "all beauty, not brains".
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
Amen. I would run from the third site as fast as possible. All that bright shiney stuff is distracting. Here's my first impression on each: Site #1: Simple. I can probably find what I'm looking for pretty easily. Site #2: Too much small text. I might have to hunt around a bit to find it, but I'll bet that what I'm looking for is there. Site #3: What a waste of bandwidth. How many graphic designers did they employ to hide the fact that there is nothing of use on their web-site at all? If I go to a web-site that has a flashy animated or video intro page -- I close it immediately and find something else.
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Hmm...they all look kind of ugly to me but in general I sense your aesthetics are weighted heavily towards what was popular in years past. I submit that an example of a great looking modern website is something like this: http://www.coffeecup.com/[^] Ignoring for the moment the giant countdown clock on the main page. It's got large clean graphics and lots of whitespace and not too much text.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
John C wrote:
Ignoring for the moment the giant countdown clock on the main page.
Ignoring it? If you could. Any web-site that makes you scroll down to actually get to the start of the content you are interested in is a failure. Remove the clock and, yeah, I agree with you. It would be aesthetically pleasing.
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When browsing the Internet, perhaps looking for something specific, I have found myself often landing on poorly-built pages. Mind you, poorly-built only from an aesthetics point of view. My immediate reaction is to simply go away and look for something else. I don't even spend a minute actually reading the website to see if it fits my needs. Perhaps this kind of behavior derives from being in charge of our website (and everything else) at my company (and also being a chronic nit-picker), but I believe that if you can't spend some time working on your website to make it somewhat good-looking, then you don't deserve my time. Your users/customers deserve usability and even some eyecandy. If you don't agree, then you don't deserve your users. Of course, there are exceptions (like CP), and cases when you simply can't avoid using a bad-looking website, but the feeling is still there. The same applies to desktop and mobile apps. Ugly UI -> I run away immediately. An example of an ugly website: http://www2.multilizer.com/[^] An example of a not-so-ugly website: http://www.hosted-projects.com/[^] An example of beautiful website: http://www.codebasehq.com/[^] (I'm not affiliated with any of the three) Am I completely crazy or is it the same for everyone else?
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Continuous Localization and My Startup
Dario Solera wrote:
Am I completely crazy or is it the same for everyone else?
Nope, sorry, you're completely crazy :) Seriously though, I see left-brain vs. right-brain at work here, nothing more. I'd rank those sites completely differently. I find eye candy to be devoid of information -- too much and I get lost and can't figure out where to start. So, I find your "beautiful website" example as teetering on the verge of too much eye candy -- it forces me to scroll down though a large eye candy image that contains only pricing info before I can find out what it is they're offering for that price. Of the three, that site is the one I'd most likely skip over and come back too later, if I still hadn't found what I was looking for. Tomato, tomato.
patbob
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When browsing the Internet, perhaps looking for something specific, I have found myself often landing on poorly-built pages. Mind you, poorly-built only from an aesthetics point of view. My immediate reaction is to simply go away and look for something else. I don't even spend a minute actually reading the website to see if it fits my needs. Perhaps this kind of behavior derives from being in charge of our website (and everything else) at my company (and also being a chronic nit-picker), but I believe that if you can't spend some time working on your website to make it somewhat good-looking, then you don't deserve my time. Your users/customers deserve usability and even some eyecandy. If you don't agree, then you don't deserve your users. Of course, there are exceptions (like CP), and cases when you simply can't avoid using a bad-looking website, but the feeling is still there. The same applies to desktop and mobile apps. Ugly UI -> I run away immediately. An example of an ugly website: http://www2.multilizer.com/[^] An example of a not-so-ugly website: http://www.hosted-projects.com/[^] An example of beautiful website: http://www.codebasehq.com/[^] (I'm not affiliated with any of the three) Am I completely crazy or is it the same for everyone else?
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Continuous Localization and My Startup
From the postings to this subject, it seems that the criteria for judging is too subjective. If one person likes a web site, another may not like it. While Dario Solera likes and dislikes the web sites he has chosen, Dan Neely and TRK3 think differently. Each is looking at something different. And I think that I would come up with a different selection of which is best and which is worst. Therefore, it is just a matter of opinion. If we can find something to be more objective about, that would be helpful.