Some of the ugliest sites are the easiest to use. Yet there is a persistent view among the web community that web sites must be elegant and beautiful examples of the designer’s art to be worth anything. This often means thumbing the nose at web accessibility and usability conventions such as blue underlined links, and the use of colours for maximum visibility.
Trade Me, Amazon, Google , My Space, and YouTube are ugly websites. They are also hugely successful websites. They don’t win a lot of design awards, but who cares – they are easy to use for most people and they make a lot of money.
Which leads me to the question, who are design awards for and what is their purpose? Suffice it to say that a site that AccEase user testers rated as their worst site ever for usability and accessibility has continued to win a whole raft of awards. I say let the users be the judge.
