Good interaction design has nothing to do with looks. Some interfaces look dreadful but work great, some look great but are painful to use. I often have to argue with fellow designers about how pretty or good looking a certain design is. Not only old school designers coming form print design (where I had the same discussions) have the impression that if something looks good, orderly and clean it also works well.

Even going beyond the taste of what looks good I often argue that the looks are a secondary thing and that we have to concentrate on the goal of the project - may it be to convey a message or to perform a task.

Google for example has been the posterchild for not being able to pull of a decent user interface - while the search page is probably one of the best UI decisions ever made.

Designers should remember that visual elements are meant to improve the user experience - looking good is part of that, but if it gets in the way of the goal it's a fail.

I will rest my case with this finding where in a test, the not so good looking vertical list has outperformed the nice grid view. It underlines another point - do test your designs.

#ui #ux #design #visual #testing

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westiseast.co.uk - Product listings - a surprising AB test result

These are the results of an AB test that finished recently on a product listing page - I think you'll find the results surprising.

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