Too many times the casual site visitor or user has an opinion on a design that only encapsulates what they thought something should look like or that it doesn’t pass validation.

There are so many more important things, like making your client happy.

Thankfully I have a day job that involves a fair amount of information design which has given me a good enough understanding of the ‘sweet spot’ that content and design have to hit to work for the USERS of the information.

It’s the same whether it’s a website, a leaflet for your VCR or a heavily technical specification.

Need to ponder this more I think.. but not in a comment box.

I imagine that a lot of people (whether it’s a personal blog or corporate site) use design to express themselves – to try to convey to the reader something about them. And sometimes that expression is not always pleasing to everyone.

But I guess one of the principle characteristics of a really great design is that hardly anyone notices it – it just works, first time, every time, straight out of the box, without placing any demands on the user to learn how it works.

“One reason design discussion gets reduced to bumper sticker duels is that so much of it has to be typed into bumper-sticker-sized comment forms, instead of posted in thoughtful weblog essays.”

You can find his post here.

Jeff Veen devotes a chapter to ‘barriers to entry’ in his book, Design for Community. It really resonates with me on this issue.

When a visitor comes to your website, does a screen capture, crops, resizes, savesAs, then uploads the graphic to their website, you expect them to be interested in what the visuals of your site represent. You would hope they would also be interested in other aspects of your site, but sometimes words can’t do it justice.

If this was to happen to me, I would be gratified to see someone write more than a flippant one liner to accompany the graphic. Wouldn’t it make sense to invest the same or more effort in expressing your impression of the design?

Some people choose to take their time to tell a story, others are more prolific, perhaps at the expense of quality. Each seems to serve a separate, valid purpose to me. But we all know which we would prefer.

Thanks for the comment. I think you’re right.

I’d like to point out, however, that I think you meant Derek Powazek and not Jeffrey Veen. (I’m assuming this is the Design for Community book you’re referring to)

I’ve heard Derek give a full-day talk on community design, and it was one of the best days of learning I’ve had!

One thing I remember (and deals with barriers of entry) is the “online community’s answer to Fitts’s law” (for lack of a better term) wherein the quality of a post is directly proportional to the difficulty in making it.

“I’m a real fan of balancing usability against design – making something intuitive to use, as well as nice to look at”

But, I don’t think the wording is quite right or I may be misinterpretting. I agree with him if he is saying that design is an important aspect of usability. Much more than is credited these days I believe.

Design adds credibility to a site (good, professional design), creates a compelling or pleasant experience for a user, and basically forms the backbone of a Web site interface. Any one out there old enough to remeber DOS? Ughh.

Design is not the same as “art”, though it certainly has a distinctive aethetic style or look that some may like or not based on their own tastes.

But when a design becomes “expressive” as Richard says, it no longer functions as a means of communicating and organizing information (solving problems visually through an interface).

It becomes “art” which, as the snobs at my old job used to say “causes problems instead of solves them”…

I think the kinder way of putting it is that design should aid and not interfere in the primary purpose the user has in your site: to find information or complete a task or set of tasks.

As in all the various mediums, this is called “transparent design” and Richard is correct when he says that when done well, it is a thing of beauty in many ways!