Is Ugly the new Black?

Site Reference gives us The Surprising Truth About Ugly Design.

I believe this is just an me-too rehash of a post from the great Robert Scoble.

Basically, the argument is simple: look at PlentyOfFish.com, MySpace.com, and Craigslist.com and you find examples of how “ugly sites” can succeed while many pretty sites have failed. Therefore, the argument continues, ugly is the new black.

Karl Long points us to Andy Rutlage’s interesting rant and also makes the interesting point that PlentyOfFish, MySpace, and Craigslist are all free services — it’s easy to look past visual design when the price is right.

To me, what this is really about is there are instances where the content is so powerful that aesthetic/visual design can fall by the wayside and the site still perform well (by whatever objectives of performance you want to put to it).

The thing is there is nothing new here. Move along. Nothing here to see.

eBay, in it’s early incarnations, was never considered a slick design.
Yahoo was fairly dull.
HotWired was hideous in their graphical choices.

People will gravitate to good content in practically any container you put it in.

When does aesthetic/visual design play a role? Ask the iPod designers.

At some point, (and I don’t quite know where that point is at this time,) fashion, visual appeal, and aesthetic comfort becomes a priority to the audience. At that point, you better be ready or else you’ll look dated and amateurish. But get there too early and you’re wasting valuable resources on something users don’t care about.

It’s a fine balance that I believe we’re only beginning to get our heads around.