As a creative / designer I find myself increasingly put up against the wall by all these “experts” who seem to be infesting our industry, all of them trying to back up their claims with reams of data, and none of them having the first clue about aesthetics.
In short, design adds value, it adds relevance, and it is integral to the successful communication of your message.
People like Jakob Neilsen would probably like to force us all to read text only webpages. Personally, I think engineers should keep their views on aesthetics to themselves.
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Tempus Fugitt
Thank you thank you thank you; I LOVE this article. As someone with education and experience in both engineering and artistic areas, I see plenty of “fail” designs on both sides. Ones put together logically according to the engineer’s mental model and not that of the intended user and ones which are beautiful to look at and a nightmare to use. The failure in both cases is often a lack of “classical aesthetics.” The engineers/usability experts offer data-driven insights into what the users NEED for understanding; the artists/designers offer aesthetic insight into what the users WANT for their happiness. (Of course it’s really not that black & white, but hopefully you get the point…)
Also, ugly obviously doesn’t always mean “fail,” as demonstrated by Craigslist, because you have to take into account user expectations. What is Craigslist replacing? Newspaper classifieds, which are really ugly, but Craigslist wins because it offers far more than the hardcopy version.
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Salemd
You make a good argument about the value of an aesthetically pleasing web-site and I agree with your premise. I think many designers have dealt with people who underestimate the value of a well designed site. But, my experience in HCI has verified your point rather than exemplified the dichotomy that your article implies. My background is in both design ( art and graphic design) and development (programming and HCI). In my HCI classes the professors have stressed the importance of a visually pleasing site and so have many papers in the field of HCI ( as your citation of Fogg and Tseng at Stanford shows). I think one difference between HCI and design is the definition of what a well designed site is. I think designers have a much higher professional standard of aesthetics than developers do, but shouldn’t we expect that.
Last year a colleague went to a Marketing Pros conference. He came back impressed by a speaker from a company called Eight by Eight, who uses extensive eye tracking studies to track visitor behavior. The findings suggested that all visitors reacted the best to 3-column layouts. The colleague made the case that all web designs we did from here on out should be 3-column layouts. I was skeptical, but willing to keep an open mind.
I then looked at the company’s website and horrified. The design was the visual equivalent of nails on a blackboard. All credibility instantly out the window for me.
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Juan.Lanus
I read the article carefully and enjoyed it. It’s valuable and I’m recommending it.
Also, I recalled other article I read many years ago.
An article thath changed my vision about the usability stuff in general: an epiphany.
As of then I was looking for the usability touchstone in the graphics layer of the web UI and Dick Berry taught me, with an iceberg analogy, that a great deal of the sense of usability is under the water.
The article is still there, and I recommend it, even after so many years. IMO it is to be read together with Patrick’s:
“The user experience – The iceberg analogy of usability”:http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/w-berry/ , by Dick Berry
A correlation between design and usability appears to be completely valid.
From the site’s standpoint, careful design of the visuals usually comes together with good interaction design (in skort: the functionality of the site with CSS turned off) because of the target quality level of the site.
From the user’s standpoint the same is valid: “Hmmm … if the graphics are good then everything will be designed that well!”
After having opened thousands of sites, users recognize the good ones as fast as Patrick says.
The sense of betterness that the good visuals convey influences the user’s general perception of the whole UI.
Fantastic article. I will definitely keep this one handy for refuting some of the Nielson die-hards out there.
@mediacontour re: Craigslist – there is definitely something to be said for being first to market in that kind of situation as well. I can only imagine how much more I would use that site if it was well designed.
Creating world-class web sites requires mastery of many elements. Good web design isn’t easy, and articles like this are important reminders that as web designers and developers we need to continually educate our clients about what it takes to do it right.
Visual design matters. Thanks for making the point so eloquently.
Don Norman’s book “Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things”, referenced in your article, has a wonderful story about automatic teller machine design and usability. The study cited has an awesome conclusion, which is (as I recall) that aesthetically designed interfaces make people feel good, and that the positive emotion gives them the will to work through minor problems they may encounter, ultimately resulting in a more users completing tasks successfully. Very interesting. A highly recommended read. (Even though it largely addresses the design of physical objects, the majority of concepts discussed by Mr. Norman can be applied to web and user interface design.)
Nielsen’s Site is very boring. Viewers will never take interest visiting his website, surely content is king but you have to make it viewer friendly like adding some images and videos.
Based on Patrick’s article, people visit a site like Craigslist to do a specific task. Because of this, looks are not so important.
If you look at “Warren Buffet”:http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ ‘s website, it certainly follows the text is king strategy. Looks primitive, but loads up fast, and simply and clearly presents its data.
Due to the lack of visual masking in the short presentations, the results from the two studies that claim impressions are made in tens of milliseconds are highly dubious.
The visual system has a dedicated buffer and it’s guaranteed that users responses were influenced by processing which occurred across 100s of milliseconds. The only way to reduce the impact of this buffer is to display a masking stimulus following the stimulus of interest.
Sidenote: Early psychology experiments used a complicated physical contraption called a Tachistoscope to control very short duration timing. Modern psychology experimentation software use low level display parameters to synch screen updates with the hardware refresh rates.
This doesn’t jeopardize the general message of the article, but I hate to see research used to improperly promote a sensationalist headline.
Despite what one might think from reading other comments, the debate is not graphics vs. text. Skilled typesetting can render text-only pages both beautiful and graphical. (Clearly not Nielsen’s approach.)
Our challenge as designers is to weigh and successfully balance the emotional reaction we seek to elicit against the information that needs to be conveyed. An accurate understanding of context (user, content, market, etc.) is what guides skilled designers to the sweet spot on the classical <-> expressive continuum.
BTW, it’s important to note that the prinicples Lynch discusses are relevant and applicable to a wide array of design projects, not just web design.
Good article, but for those web designers that choose to ignore visual elements, you have to ask yourselves a couple of questions. If people are just interested in data, why do the majority of people have hi-speed internet connections? Why are people getting bigger and higher resolution monitors? It isn’t to see more text data. If that is all they wanted they could use an old 14400 dial up modem and a dusty 600×480 monitor.
People are buying bigger HD monitors and using hi-speed internet connections because people want visuals and they respond to them.
Now, more than ever, a web site has to have compelling, rich, visuals in order to be successful. It is just as important as the copy.
This article ultimately presents a really well thought out and supported picture of two sides of aesthetics in web design – design for impact (expressive) and design for understanding (classical). I love that it pushes against Nielsen’s dismissal of graphics. We’ve talked to test participants who say that they don’t see or pay attention to imagery on an informational site, but we take those answers with a grain of salt. We never believe that people are trying to tell us they want the information stripped of all design or that they want old school web non-design, like Alertbox. Good design enhances the readability of text-heavy content on the web. Nice to have a well-thought out paper that supports what we know in our gut.
I’m currently doing a computer science education and we had the same topic about low level vision. In that class they said the time the brain can group proximity/closure/similarity/continuity was 0.2 seconds or 200 milliseconds. But that was in a crowded screen where suddenly an image appeared and disappeared. I love this kind of magic a website can create in the human brain. It was a hard article for me because i had to look-up some words. But i managed.
… and spies two ladies chatting, sipping their cocktails. One is very attractive (as in HOT!) and her friend, somewhat plain. Guess which one our man goes for? Even if “plain jane” is more interesting, with more context and personality? Why Eve picked the shiney red apple? Maybe it’s the same reason my clients, when asked to show me web sites they like, will pick the ones with the pretty picture and otherwise horrible design (aesthetically and from a usability standpoint).
That’s why its called “eye candy”.
Now, I’ll study Mr Lynch’s web style guide to learn how to better apply makeup to an otherwise “plain Jane” (or, as they say, “put lipstick on this pig and sell it!”)
26 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleDuncan Macdonald
Thanks. That’s all I can really say.
As a creative / designer I find myself increasingly put up against the wall by all these “experts” who seem to be infesting our industry, all of them trying to back up their claims with reams of data, and none of them having the first clue about aesthetics.
In short, design adds value, it adds relevance, and it is integral to the successful communication of your message.
People like Jakob Neilsen would probably like to force us all to read text only webpages. Personally, I think engineers should keep their views on aesthetics to themselves.
Tempus Fugitt
Thank you thank you thank you; I LOVE this article. As someone with education and experience in both engineering and artistic areas, I see plenty of “fail” designs on both sides. Ones put together logically according to the engineer’s mental model and not that of the intended user and ones which are beautiful to look at and a nightmare to use. The failure in both cases is often a lack of “classical aesthetics.” The engineers/usability experts offer data-driven insights into what the users NEED for understanding; the artists/designers offer aesthetic insight into what the users WANT for their happiness. (Of course it’s really not that black & white, but hopefully you get the point…)
Also, ugly obviously doesn’t always mean “fail,” as demonstrated by Craigslist, because you have to take into account user expectations. What is Craigslist replacing? Newspaper classifieds, which are really ugly, but Craigslist wins because it offers far more than the hardcopy version.
Salemd
You make a good argument about the value of an aesthetically pleasing web-site and I agree with your premise. I think many designers have dealt with people who underestimate the value of a well designed site. But, my experience in HCI has verified your point rather than exemplified the dichotomy that your article implies. My background is in both design ( art and graphic design) and development (programming and HCI). In my HCI classes the professors have stressed the importance of a visually pleasing site and so have many papers in the field of HCI ( as your citation of Fogg and Tseng at Stanford shows). I think one difference between HCI and design is the definition of what a well designed site is. I think designers have a much higher professional standard of aesthetics than developers do, but shouldn’t we expect that.
jonhrach
Last year a colleague went to a Marketing Pros conference. He came back impressed by a speaker from a company called Eight by Eight, who uses extensive eye tracking studies to track visitor behavior. The findings suggested that all visitors reacted the best to 3-column layouts. The colleague made the case that all web designs we did from here on out should be 3-column layouts. I was skeptical, but willing to keep an open mind.
I then looked at the company’s website and horrified. The design was the visual equivalent of nails on a blackboard. All credibility instantly out the window for me.
Great article. I’ll be passing it along.
Juan.Lanus
I read the article carefully and enjoyed it. It’s valuable and I’m recommending it.
Also, I recalled other article I read many years ago.
An article thath changed my vision about the usability stuff in general: an epiphany.
As of then I was looking for the usability touchstone in the graphics layer of the web UI and Dick Berry taught me, with an iceberg analogy, that a great deal of the sense of usability is under the water.
The article is still there, and I recommend it, even after so many years. IMO it is to be read together with Patrick’s:
“The user experience – The iceberg analogy of usability”:http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/w-berry/ , by Dick Berry
A correlation between design and usability appears to be completely valid.
From the site’s standpoint, careful design of the visuals usually comes together with good interaction design (in skort: the functionality of the site with CSS turned off) because of the target quality level of the site.
From the user’s standpoint the same is valid: “Hmmm … if the graphics are good then everything will be designed that well!”
After having opened thousands of sites, users recognize the good ones as fast as Patrick says.
The sense of betterness that the good visuals convey influences the user’s general perception of the whole UI.
KellyBaker
Fantastic article. I will definitely keep this one handy for refuting some of the Nielson die-hards out there.
@mediacontour re: Craigslist – there is definitely something to be said for being first to market in that kind of situation as well. I can only imagine how much more I would use that site if it was well designed.
RZasadzinski
Creating world-class web sites requires mastery of many elements. Good web design isn’t easy, and articles like this are important reminders that as web designers and developers we need to continually educate our clients about what it takes to do it right.
Visual design matters. Thanks for making the point so eloquently.
Don Norman’s book “Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things”, referenced in your article, has a wonderful story about automatic teller machine design and usability. The study cited has an awesome conclusion, which is (as I recall) that aesthetically designed interfaces make people feel good, and that the positive emotion gives them the will to work through minor problems they may encounter, ultimately resulting in a more users completing tasks successfully. Very interesting. A highly recommended read. (Even though it largely addresses the design of physical objects, the majority of concepts discussed by Mr. Norman can be applied to web and user interface design.)
scollett
A truly great article. I also agree with the first comment posted regarding Jacob’s site.
Thanks very much!
tom54
Nielsen’s Site is very boring. Viewers will never take interest visiting his website, surely content is king but you have to make it viewer friendly like adding some images and videos.
lohwengk
@mediacontour
Based on Patrick’s article, people visit a site like Craigslist to do a specific task. Because of this, looks are not so important.
If you look at “Warren Buffet”:http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ ‘s website, it certainly follows the text is king strategy. Looks primitive, but loads up fast, and simply and clearly presents its data.
andyed
Due to the lack of visual masking in the short presentations, the results from the two studies that claim impressions are made in tens of milliseconds are highly dubious.
The visual system has a dedicated buffer and it’s guaranteed that users responses were influenced by processing which occurred across 100s of milliseconds. The only way to reduce the impact of this buffer is to display a masking stimulus following the stimulus of interest.
Sidenote: Early psychology experiments used a complicated physical contraption called a Tachistoscope to control very short duration timing. Modern psychology experimentation software use low level display parameters to synch screen updates with the hardware refresh rates.
This doesn’t jeopardize the general message of the article, but I hate to see research used to improperly promote a sensationalist headline.
More at http://surfmind.com/muzings/?p=81
chrisbarnes
Great post! Definitely worth sharing.
Despite what one might think from reading other comments, the debate is not graphics vs. text. Skilled typesetting can render text-only pages both beautiful and graphical. (Clearly not Nielsen’s approach.)
Our challenge as designers is to weigh and successfully balance the emotional reaction we seek to elicit against the information that needs to be conveyed. An accurate understanding of context (user, content, market, etc.) is what guides skilled designers to the sweet spot on the classical <-> expressive continuum.
BTW, it’s important to note that the prinicples Lynch discusses are relevant and applicable to a wide array of design projects, not just web design.
TOR
Good article, but for those web designers that choose to ignore visual elements, you have to ask yourselves a couple of questions. If people are just interested in data, why do the majority of people have hi-speed internet connections? Why are people getting bigger and higher resolution monitors? It isn’t to see more text data. If that is all they wanted they could use an old 14400 dial up modem and a dusty 600×480 monitor.
People are buying bigger HD monitors and using hi-speed internet connections because people want visuals and they respond to them.
Now, more than ever, a web site has to have compelling, rich, visuals in order to be successful. It is just as important as the copy.
Tania Schlatter
This article ultimately presents a really well thought out and supported picture of two sides of aesthetics in web design – design for impact (expressive) and design for understanding (classical). I love that it pushes against Nielsen’s dismissal of graphics. We’ve talked to test participants who say that they don’t see or pay attention to imagery on an informational site, but we take those answers with a grain of salt. We never believe that people are trying to tell us they want the information stripped of all design or that they want old school web non-design, like Alertbox. Good design enhances the readability of text-heavy content on the web. Nice to have a well-thought out paper that supports what we know in our gut.
Usability Student
I’m currently doing a computer science education and we had the same topic about low level vision. In that class they said the time the brain can group proximity/closure/similarity/continuity was 0.2 seconds or 200 milliseconds. But that was in a crowded screen where suddenly an image appeared and disappeared. I love this kind of magic a website can create in the human brain. It was a hard article for me because i had to look-up some words. But i managed.
nicksharpe
… and spies two ladies chatting, sipping their cocktails. One is very attractive (as in HOT!) and her friend, somewhat plain. Guess which one our man goes for? Even if “plain jane” is more interesting, with more context and personality? Why Eve picked the shiney red apple? Maybe it’s the same reason my clients, when asked to show me web sites they like, will pick the ones with the pretty picture and otherwise horrible design (aesthetically and from a usability standpoint).
That’s why its called “eye candy”.
Now, I’ll study Mr Lynch’s web style guide to learn how to better apply makeup to an otherwise “plain Jane” (or, as they say, “put lipstick on this pig and sell it!”)
Eat first- ask questions later.