People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

well, I have a parking timer installed in the windshield of my car, and it has a 'universally hailed' beautiful design.

It is an obnoxious hassle to replace the batteries on it, and equally so set the clock on it.

So, should I trust thus beautiful design to not be a hassle in daily use..? I long for an ugly parking timer that is easy to use, but those have been driven out of the market by this beauty.

And then that assertion may be shattered when they get to use it…

There’s a lot of nice looking crap out there.

That's a problem for products that have been vibe coded to the bone. They may look slick, but behind the scene they can be ugly and fragile.

A problem I've seen in programming too: understanding and articulating the value of quality is necessary but nowhere near sufficient for actually doing good work! So you end up with folks who've gotten past the initial hurdle—developing taste and confidence—but, either individually or in an organizational context, are only able to do okay quality work. Not awful but not especially elegant or insightful either.

And so we get people making totally reasonable arguments about the value of design and then producing polished but tasteless and shallow corporate products. Or we get people who start understanding the value of maintainable, understandable code, but get stuck on design patterns, "clean code" rules and "best practices" rather than conceptually clear, coherent and effective code design.

I have some sympathy. Getting past that initial hurdle rests on skills and tacit knowledge that take time, practice and mentorship to build after you've developed an appreciation for good taste. And, especially in a corporate setting, you have to get most of that practice and mentorship in public.

I have to agree with the article. IMO, the importance of design/aesthetics is beyond absurd and people have become laughably rigid. Design used to be about creativity, but now it's basically a boring data-driven science; there isn't much room for error. Rounded corners on your components could make the difference between a failed business and a multi-million dollar business. Or maybe a few fade-in animations...

I wish I was joking but I've had so many experiences where I built something with a ton of features with a perfect, bug-free UI and simple/clean design but people are like "The UI is basic" but then after spending just a few hours restyling, people will say "This is cool." It's the exact same UI, just a few more rounded corners and animations is all it takes sometimes.

As a developer, sometimes you spend days wiring complex logic together and the user gives you an apathetic shrug... Then you spend 5 minutes adding rounded corners and a subtle drop shadow and then it's like 'WOW, such a good feature', you code fast!

I've witnessed people dump perfectly functioning, great looking websites for more boring but trendy designs with less flexible functionality, more lock-in and higher costs. Design is important to an absurd extent.

Frankly, I don't like modern design trends, it's very information-scarce with huge fonts... Requires so much scrolling, makes my fingers and eyeballs tired from moving back and fourth! Also, I lose my train of thought before I finished reading the first paragraph.

I tried using Microsoft Windows OS after a few years of Linux and was surprised to find that the UI elements were just so massive, it was like trying to read a book through a keyhole! I was wondering WTF happened. It was like a scene out of planet of the apes!

The sad thing about it is that people have very little tolerance for creative designs nowadays; it's very boring/standard. I've seen more than a few memes going around about how logos of major companies have all become the same: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Finsightcre...

It's kind of disturbing. This feels like a systemic issue. I guess people have major trust issues. They have zero tolerance for anything slightly outside of the norm. You have to wonder what about our system makes people so universally distrusting... Well I think I may know the answer to that.