Aspiring to beauty in our designs is admirable. But it doesn’t guarantee usability, nor is it a product or marketing strategy. Like “simple” and “easy” before it, “beautiful” says very little about the product. How many people, fed up with PowerPoint, cry out in frustration, “If only it were more beautiful”?
At best, the problem is simple: No one has figured out how to describe their product effectively. For example, Write, a note-taking app, describes itself as “a beautiful home for all your notes,” which doesn’t say much about why one might want it. Macworld describes it as “Easy Markdown Writing for Dropbox Users.” That’s both concise and specific: If you like Markdown and use Dropbox, you’ll read more.
User Experience Design is hard to get right. Good designers begin by attempting to understand…
Staying in tune with what users want means more loyal customers—and more revenue for companies.…
Staying in tune with what users want means more loyal customers—and more revenue for companies.…
Many of us have had the experience of feeling like we’re shouting into an online…
Dark patterns are a popular design topic but defining them can be difficult. That’s because…
Designing better and delivering faster is the dream of all designers, but it need not…