[Sigia-l] is bad design a choice?

[Luke Hardiman]

> some stores seem to succeed by deliberately violating the basic
principles of designing  
> good store.

You have a point with regard to physical stores where flea-market style
disorganisation is a frame of reference for the consumer hunting for a
bargain. However most people know that E-Bay is a global online brand
and as such has no excuse for not progressing their shocking front end. 

There is nothing endearing about amateur web design, especially on an
e-commerce site. Stakeholders should at the very least be concerned with
providing rudimentary accessibility features and presenting a
professional brand identity, not to mention the fact that if they did
away with those table layouts their site would be more portable to
mobile devices.

If the site were to launch today with the look they currently have, I
suspect that such an amateur shop window would chase away more people
concerned about handing over their card details than it would attract.

Luke Hardiman
Designer

Tel: +27 21 481 4900
Fax: +27 21 426 5339
Email: luke at go2africa.com

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On
Behalf Of Karl Fast
Sent: 17 October 2005 02:35 PM
To: 'sigia l'
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] is bad design a choice?

> Think about it, if they had the design of Mercedes.com or 
> Tiffanys.com, would people think they're getting such a great deal?

Paco Underhill argues this point in his book "Why We Buy." He points out
that some stores seem to succeed by deliberately violating the basic
principles of designing a good store. Surplus stores are a good example:
badly organized, poor lighting, narrow aisles, things tossed into
bins...but it works in that case. It wouldn't work for The Gap, but it
does work in some cases.




--
Karl Fast
http://www.livingskies.com/

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