Tim Almond

I’ve just finished reading a piece by Jason Santa Maria called Pretty Ugly  that sums up much of my view about good design.

The fundamental thing about web based applications (or, any software application) is how well they work. It’s why I’m often against the "design the UI first" approach. The approach I follow is:-

1. What does the system need to output.
2. Work backwards to what you need in to get that output.
3. Work out the best way to get that.

As Jason points out in his excellent article "people buy used cars everyday because they just work". Likewise, I’ve built webapps for companies that were black on white with no CSS, no graphic designer. That’s what the client wanted. However, I believe they were well designed. They served their purpose, requested a minimum amount of information, gave clear error messages to users, and tried to get users to get their job done as quickly as possible.

What I don’t believe is that ugly is somehow better. People don’t gravitate towards ugly or bland websites. They may use them despite of their blandness, or accept that they are a cheaper product. But they do not opt for them. Ugly is not the new cool.

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Tags: Design //