“Right and wrong do not exist in graphic design. There is only effective and non-effective communication. Every one can complain about advertisements in the magazines, but clients are only interested in whether it attracts possible costumers or not.”

Read on: Peter Bilak - Illegibility

Watch your users, it’s possible that they have the solution for your design problem:

“A new green college campus was built, but one thing was still debated: Where in the grass should we put the paved walkways?

Some felt the walkways should be around the edges, to leave the center green and untouched. Some felt the walkways should cut diagonal, connecting all buildings to all buildings.

One professor had the winning idea: Don’t make any walkways this year. At the end of the year, look at where the grass is worn away, showing us where the students are walking. Then just pave those paths.”

Read on: Let pedestrians define the walkways

If your content or products don’t fall into the type that people usually use the search engine to find on a website, you’d better be concentrating on creating an effective linking system.

“When we looked at the data from our study, we found that there wasn’t a single user out of 30 who always used the search engine first when looking for product information. None of the users in our study were search dominant. However, we did uncover some link-dominant users. About 20% of our participants chose links exclusively.”

“Depending on the specific content on their site, teams might want to focus specifically on either the search engine or the links, but not necessarily both. Everything we’ve seen in our testing says that focusing the resources on a single approach can dramatically improve the user’s experience.”

Read on: Are There Users Who Always Search?

or listen to the UIE podcast

“Use a pleasing design, one that looks good and feels, well, sexy, and the behavior seems to go along more smoothly, more easily, and better. Attractive things work better.”

Read on: Emotion & Design: Attractive things work better

“Always aspire to create aesthetic designs. Aesthetic designs are perceived as easier to use, are more readily accepted and used over time, and promote creative thinking and problem solving. Aesthetic designs also foster positive relationships with people, making them more tolerant of problems with a design.”

From the book: Universal Principles of Design (Amazon | Google Books)

Update: another great article on the topic: The Value of Good Design

“Graphics […] help when they improve the users’ experience. However, we’ve found not all graphics improve the experience. Some images just take up space or, in the worst case, confuse the user.

To decide when a graphic is worth the investment, we’ve classified them into three types: Navigation Graphics, Content Graphics, and Ornamental Graphics. Our research consistently shows that well-done navigation and content graphics contribute to the users’ experience. It’s much harder to see the value from Ornamental Graphics. […] Ornamental Graphics, at best, they neither help nor hurt.”

Read on: Deciding When Graphics Will Help (and When They Won’t)

New Coke

Despite thousands of sip tests and countless efforts fine-tuning the taste based on customer feedback, the New Coke was a huge disaster.

“Gladwell contends that what people say they like in these tests may not reflect what they will actually buy to sit at home and drink over a week or so.” from Wikipedia

Aeron Chair

In spite of the very negative opinions that the Aeron chair recieved in early tests, Hermann Miller went on and launched it to become the most iconic and best selling chair in the history of office chairs.

A good summary from Jason Oke of Leo Burnett Toronto:

“People can’t always tell you what they want, what they like, or give their true opinion on something. I don’t think this point is seriously debated anymore, but still an awful lot of research continues to ask people, point blank, to state a preference regarding their favourite product/package/ ad/etc, or to explain their decision-making process.”

Read on: What research can’t tell you

Target.com has copied the review system from Amazon.com (they have bought the software platform from Amazon). But though the feature is exactly the same, it works for Amazon very well but doesn’t work for Target.

For example, Harry Potter and the the Deathly Hallows in the first month after release received:

• 1805 reviews on Amazon.com
• 319 reviews on Barnes & Noble (bn.com)
• 331 reviews on Walmart
• 3 reviews on Target.com

All retailers sold about the same amount of books (about 2 million copies).

Read on: Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon

The iPod

“The first iPod was released in 2001. Within a year, Apple had revised it to improve ergonomics in a second version. But it wasn’t until the fourth version in 2004 that sales started to take off. By the beginning of 2005, Apple was on its fifth version of the iPod, now in color.

It definitely took a few years and Apple’s continued investment in many product revisions. Yet by the time they started to lead the market, Apple had already released the iTunes store and the iPod Mini. What competitor was going to be able to match that, let alone catch up to the learning curve?”

Read on: Apple’s “Overnight” Success!

Amazon

“Amazon launched in 1994, but only added book reviews in 1996; they focused on getting users first. They didn’t add CDs until 1998, and it was 2001 before they even posted a profit. It’s easy to ignore this, and look at their success from this point onwards…”
Read on: You’re just getting started

“One of the more common problems which tends to create doubt and confusion is caused by the inexperienced and anxious executive who innocently expects, or even demands, to see not one but many solutions to a problem. […] This practice is as bewildering as it is wasteful. It discourages spontaneity, encourages indifference, and more often than not produces results which are neither distinguished, interesting, nor effective. In short, good ideas rarely come in bunches.”

By Paul Rand

Read on: The Politics of Design (via 37signals)

“When we looked at the actual download speeds of the sites we tested, we found that there was no correlation between these and the perceived speeds reported by our users. About.com, rated slowest by our users, was actually the fastest site (average: 8 seconds). Amazon.com, rated as one of the fastest sites by users, was really the slowest (average: 36 seconds).”

Read on: The Truth About Download Time