Not Just Another Pretty Interface

Part of my role as blogger and content provider at Phases Design Studio is to represent The User – that is you and your clients – during the design process. As the designers and developers build your websites, I help to ensure that each of the design and development choices we make enhances the usability of the site in some way, making it easier for your clients or customers to find and do what they want at your site (and what you want them to do – buy something usually).

As part of my ongoing exploration of design principles, I’m coming across a lot of discussion regarding the use and utility of beauty, whimsy and aesthetics (or “eye candy,” to inveterate cynics and those with no souls) in website design and how these factors relate to a website’s functionality.

Hardcore developers and marketing types often come across as dismissive of aesthetic values because they seem frivolous and don’t obviously relate directly to conversions or sales. Obviously you don’t want prettiness to metastasize into ornateness or clutter, or for it to interfere with a site’s usefulness. But I’m here to defend beauty, and not just for its own sake. Beauty can be used to nudge a User in the direction we want them to go.

Website Beauty Is More Than Skin Deep

To take one example, we can place a button on a website that looks like a flat square or rectangle, or we can build a button with bevels, shadow and gradient effects added to simulate depth. The textured, shadowed button will look “prettier,” but will also look more like a real button, which is a valuable visual cue, subtly telling The User what to do next – push the button (I didn’t come up with this example all by myself).

This is just one example of the utility of beauty, but in general, a lot of good, hard data indicates that Users relate attractiveness to functionality, and that, in fact, attractive things work better. An attractive web design will allow Users to more efficiently and easily do what they need to do, while building trust and enhancing your brand.