Sanaroo: Users don’t care about your (web) design.
“When working on a new design it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that every person who will visit the site is also a website designer. In turn, we convince ourselves that all visitors will pay careful attention to our design and will analyse every aspect of a page and assess how beautiful and original (or not) your design is. This is wrong!” But they certainly will let you know if they can’t figure it out, or dislike your interface — they won’t visit.
Comments:
(in the same way, I don’t ever want anyone to notice--or even see--my makeup. I just want them to think I look good effortlessly! Ha.)
The makeup analogy’s interesting, in comparison with the way I explain it. I use the ‘greased sliding board’ analogy. Once you’re on, it should be effortless to get to where you want to go ... and fun at the same time.
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Unless we’re talking about a creative’s portfolio or a personal site, I’ve always thought of the design part of the equation the same way I think about makeup. Its only purpose is to enhance, and I try to make the level of enhancement inversely proportional to its level of noticeability. I don’t want the user to notice how pretty the site is. I want a site to be intuitively usable. Design facilitates that.