Usable Doesn’t Have To Mean Ugly
My purpose here was not to tell designers to forget about slickness,
sexiness and beauty. This should be obvious from the beautiful examples
shown, which certainly qualify as both usable and attractive. No one
expects owners of beautiful websites to suddenly drop their enhancements
in favor of the Craigslist look just to make them more usable.
Rather, this article is just a reminder that eye candy is important, but it isn’t
everything, and that for a design to be truly beautiful, it has to be
functional, have purpose and contribute in some way to the website’s
intuitiveness, usefulness and branding. All of these things contribute to the
overall effect of a design.