Okay, first and foremost I think good design is important, very important, I just want to start a dialogue here.
Earlier this week I came across this post from Andrew Michael Baron, talking about how Twitter “could lose the game by design” and then today I came across this delightful rant on Metlabdesign about Zappos’ design being great for 1999 (love the idea that their redesign is taking them to 2003).
Ranting about poorly designed big effective sites is not new, Craigslist, Ebay even Amazon aren’t the most visually appealing or best “designed” sites and people have been ranting about them for ages. Only to see them get bigger and bigger and make more and more money. Google uses a lot of data in it’s decision making around design and even then some people would say that Google’s design isn’t great – and Douglas Bowman a great, well respected designer actually left Google to join Twitter!
Here’s the thing, the average user wouldn’t know good design if it bit them on the ass. People make decisions about sites in an instant and in my opinion as long as sites meet the minimum design standard people will use them. The clincher, I think is not in design but in the product being sold, in the service given to the costumer and in the difference between competitors.
You shouldn’t look at a site like Zappos as a stand alone without looking at the other shoe-selling sites on line. Here’s a question, what’s the second best shoe selling site online? I have no idea. So as long as Zappos continues to have a wide range of shoes and great service will they really be killed? Me thinks not. Unless someone comes along and offers the same service, the same simplicity in ordering, returning and customer care as well as the same extensive catalogue of product and then has better design, that’s when Zappos should really worry about it’s design, till then it should pay attention to design but just not as much as some people are saying they should.
Same goes for Twitter, it’s simple, light, open and still growing at an incredible clip. Sure the site could be better for new users but will poor design really cost them the game? Not when Facebook is even more messy, WTF is a poke, I kid, I know what a poke is, imjustsayin the average new comer to these social networks learns quickly and as long as design is too big a hurdle they’re willing to look past it and give it a go. Facebook, Myspace, bebo are all fairly messy themselves so why should twitter being a bit messy hurt them so much?
Again, I want to reiterate, I think design is very important, simplicity and design is probably a good indicator of long term success in a lot of products, I just don’t think poor design, especially online, is as big of a factor as some of these other posts are making it out to be. I know this will strike a nerve with some of the people who read these posts but I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this.
