Ask YC: Do young people care about a nice visual designed websites?

I'm going to be a little contrary to some of these other guys:

Good design is very important. However: Usually, if you're the first in that space, poor design is tolerated (arguably MySpace) If you're not the first in the space, you need a 'better mousetrap' which can be the same features, and a better design in some cases. Virb has excellent asthetics, and a great user-feel, but it didn't take off like myspace or Facebook, so obviously design is not the most important thing either.

It's all a matter of perspective, and what is important to your site. I would say, if you have the money, hire a good, professional web designer.

nice blog post

there are a couple of ways to look at it, but you first need to figure out what you are selling. in the case of myspace, they were creating a place for people without web skills and money to have a social website, it was geocities2.0 and if someone at geocities was paying attention, they should have come up with the idea. the ipod on the other hand was designed to have every sales advantage over every other MP3 player, and at launch, IT DID. the iPod was smaller, easier to use, had a larger hard drive, and it was cheaper; Jobs was able to sell the iPod cheaper than other MP3 players because he knew that he could make the money up in the online store, so if Apple broke even on the device, he would make it up later. So Apple had more in common with selling a Starbucks Coffee, than selling a piece of hardware. Apple became a music experience vendor.

Dyson sells vacuum cleaners as an experience vendor too.

How are new cars sold? Are they a total experience sale, or are they a hardware sale?

How are used cars sold? Are they a total experience sale, or are they a hardware sale?

If your site is an experience sale in a developed marketplace, you may need to think about design "now," however, if your device is a time saver, or is new in its marketplace, you should be able to iterate the design over time.

My partner & I wrestled with the same issue -- craigslist is fugly but functional, etc. Does depend on audience, but we're following Mint's path. First pass was functional but bad UI (probably an extension of the prototype), then they got $4M and voila. If you're asking for all their financial data, it probably can't look like MySpace.

Here are some rules of thumb that may help guide your approach.

In my experience, you need to divide up your problem into two different issues to solve: design and branding. Design for functionality and smoothness of user experience. Brand so that your audience relates well to your product.

A lot's been written about good design. Yes, teens definitely respond to it. If a site's hard to use, they have the attention span of hummingbirds and if you cause an engagement failure because of poor usability, they'll be gone and won't return. Above all else, focus on making your site easy to use and the user experience seamless.

Branding depends on your audience's demographic. Most teens have developed a strong enough, though flexible, identity to be attracted to some things and repelled by others based on their perceived sense of who they are in their greater and lesser social ecosystems. You might be interested in reading everything danah boyd (intentionally lowercase) ever wrote, most especially "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" here: http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

In general, people, no matter what their age group, adapt to symbolic systems they're immersed in. Kids in gradeschool can glance at a page in a textbook and from the fonts, point size, layout, graphics, tell you precisely whether it's a third grade book or a fourth grade book, and therefore whether it's for them or not. (The same goes for someone looking at a full page ad in The New Yorker - font, point size, color choices, etc..) Higher income demographic kids are exposed to high end design by the time they're in their teens and have a more positive response to it than kids without the opportunity and exposure to design. In my own work with teens, non-college bound teens find Facebook's design BORRRRRING! [picture an entire class of kids singsonging that in unison] They tolerate a _lot_ of busy-ness and chaos on a page and will jump onto MySpace whenever your back is turned.