

Ask HN: How important is design? - blubbi2

How important is design when you launch a website or an app?
I'm not only speaking about UI-design, but also about the "aesthetic factor". It seems to me that design is important, but not a necessity. Of course, design will boost your startup, but is it really important to have a well-designed, beautiful interface or is it good enough to have a clean, usable interface - like HN?<p>What do you think about this issue?
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atarian
Like jospehpmay mentioned, it really depends on what you're building. Usually
I find good design to be an absolute must when breaking into a crowded space
(like social networks, email clients, etc). If you're innovating, I think most
people will usually care more about the functionality and what problem you're
trying to solve rather than how it looks.

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ragatskynet
I agree with the others but; design should be important in enterprise
applications as well. I have seen many enterprise applications which were
designed so badly people can't really use them very well. Of course I am not
talking about fancy design things, but their usability sometimes... argh.
Though they need to cut down money on something, so they focus on the
functions instead.

But - if you want to get attraction (like said below) you need to focus on
design. You won't look at a Mercedes if it was ugly.

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josephpmay
It really depends on what your building. Are you building a B2B application
targeting IT departments? Design doesn't matter as long as it's logical and
functional. Building a consumer app? In that case, design is much more
important.

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blubbi2
What about Craigslist? Is Craigslist a special case?

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zachlatta
Craigslist is the only exception I know of.

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askovi
how about reddit?

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kurtko
Don't confuse simplicity with poor design. Or, to rephrase that as a question:
what aspect(s) of Reddit do you feel are poorly designed?

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logn
How is Reddit simple? By my count they have 40+ navigational buttons on the
main pages and each story has 6 buttons (in one form or another) [1]. Reddit
absolutely overwhelms me with places to click and gives me no sense of it
being nicely organized (as opposed to Craigslist which I think feels very
orderly). Amazon feels a lot like reddit to me, but I mostly only need to use
Amazon's search bar, so it's ok.

1\. <http://imgur.com/wVO2JUI>

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dynabros
Design = attraction

Development = personality

You need to be attracted to someone before you're willing to get to know their
personality

