While the Facebook home page shown on top might not appear the most
beautiful design to many of us, it still contains attractive aesthetic elements
(colors, gradient background, styled buttons, etc.). But when most of these
minor elements are made plain, does it really affect the usability (of course,
after you increase the color contrast for the form labels in the right upper
corner)?
If prettiness is really as important as we think, then the current Facebook
home page should perform much better than the plain alternative. How do
we know, though, that the plain version wouldn’t outperform the adorned
version?
What Makes A Design Usable?
I’m not about to make a case for bringing back blue links on a white
background on every website. In fact, as I’ll explain, both Nettuts+ and
Facebook may very well qualify as truly beautiful websites. The examples
above were more illustrative, and not meant to criticize the designers who
worked on them.
Rather, I’m encouraging designers to consider two things when adding
“beautiful” enhancements to their designs.
- Responsive and intuitive page elements
- Branding and consistency of theme
Focusing on these two things will give every pixel in a design a purpose
and will contribute to the website’s overall usability. Let’s consider both of
these, with a few simple examples to illustrate their effectiveness.